Whereas Sandi Thom’s first album Smile… It Confuses People had an attractive sparseness about it, her second paints from a woefully predictable palette. While that debut arrived on a wave of dubious stories about basement webcasts, this time there’s no advance hysteria.
‘Shape I’m In’ merges Sheryl Crow with Springsteen-lite before Thom goes all country for ‘Wounded Hearts’, and there’s an upbeat mariachi flavour to ‘Saturday Night’. ‘The Devil’s Beat’ is casually catchy pop with echoes of KT Tunstall, while on ‘Music In My Soul’ she refers to singing along to the Bee Gees and The Eagles as if these were acts of major significance. In ‘The Last Picturehouse’ she fakes nostalgia for a golden era of cinema, and ‘I’m A Human Being’ sets her out as a serial name dropper, with Stevie Wonder and The Rolling Stones cropping up, while ‘Beatbox’, apart from the banjo, is dullsville.
Thom is blessed with a naturally fluid vocal style, but she lacks a sense of musical adventure.

KEY TRACK: ‘THE DEVIL’S BEAT’