Notwithstanding the objections of backbencher indie-shmindies, there was always much more to The Corrs than they were given credit for. Under the radio-friendly surfaces lurked a stubborn melancholia – if REM had written ‘Radio’, for instance, the cognoscenti would have proclaimed it a rainy little beauty.
My bone of contention has always been the production. A song like ‘Summer Sunshine’ dwelled on the illicit thrill and commensurate pain of a covert affair conducted in broad July daylight, but you’d never know it from the AOR Shania sheen. The band were well placed to make a leap of faith into the blue prior to Borrowed Heaven, but seemed to baulk at the last minute, couldn’t quite shuck off the machinery of their own success, or a family business horse-sense rooted in shrewd showband service industry values. If that sounds snobby, it’s not meant to be: on a long night in The Point, one can surely appreciate a please-the-people ethic that’s as applicable to the E Street Band as The Indians.
With 2005’s Home it was as though, having secured their fortunes, they were seeking to express something darker in their DNA, and sought traditional airs as conductive ether. Andrea Corr in particular was an individual whose mode of expression didn’t seem to reflect her own tastes. She cited Crime And Punishment as a totem and coveted roles like Jennifer Connelly’s in Requiem For A Dream or Monica Bellucci’s in Irréversible, but one could still only sense rather than see evidence of such predilections in the work.
With Ten Feet High, I half-expected her to conjure up torch song trilogies with graveyard dirt under their nails, or maybe take a turn as one of old Nick’s ill-fated dancing partners in some Elizabethan murder ballad, with cover art depicting AC as a lily-white goth waif who’d pricked a finger on a woodland thistle and fell into a hallucinogenic seven-year fever.
The reality is a lot more nuanced. Ten Feet High is surprisingly playful, but in a serious way. The opener ‘Hello Boys’ certainly throws a serious curve, sashaying (there’s no other word for it) from stage left with its back arched and tail in the air. The clumpy Goldfrapp rhythm and the kind of synth hooks last heard on a Visage album suggest some idoru hologram proffering pay-per-view space geisha lapdances. For serious. It’s almost matched for audaciousness by a cheeky electro cover of Squeeze’s ‘Take Me I’m Yours’.
For the most part, Corr and producer Nellee Hooper have fashioned a hybrid of high street pulses, airy melodies and acoustic chamber pop. ‘Shame On You’ could be an ambient-dance Oakenfold confection, except for lines like “I sleep in open graves”. Corr is an intuitive and understated vocalist – on the title tune (“Summer has left the room”) and ‘Stupidest Girl In The World’, her delivery is first cousin to A Girl Called Eddy, or, on the bewitched music box confessional of ‘I Do’, Karen Carpenter doing Bjork. Elsewhere, ‘Anybody There’ hinges around a nimble hop-skip rhythm, but the gist of the tune is pure kitchen-sink longing, mirrored by ‘Ideal World’ – part diary entry, part ‘Eleanor Rigby’-style third-person triple vignette for only the lonely.
There are occasional missteps. The WAG-baiting ‘Champagne From A Straw’ is ill-matched by brassy backing. The real soul of the record resides in tunes like ‘24 Hours’ and the Bacharach-ian ‘This Is What It’s All About’, sweet love songs spiked with chagrin.
All told, Ten Feet High is light-headed and heavy-hearted, and an often achingly pretty record.