Album Review: Dido, Still On My Mind

No Angel has sold over 21 million copies, the follow up Life For Rent did 12 million. Let that sink in for a minute. This is Dido’s fifth album, I presume it’s similar enough to the others, although I haven’t been offered money to listen to those as yet, so I can’t be sure.

This one, we’re told, displays the commendably christened Dido Florian Cloud de Bounevialle O'Malley Armstrong's “love of hip hop”. You’d find that hard to glean from listening alone. With the best will in the world, this is just bland from start to finish, delivered with all the passion of an underpaid I.T. support line employee with one eye on the clock. The backing tracks make Coldplay sound like Einstürzende Neubauten, nowhere more so than on ‘Hell After This’ – ‘Hell During This’ might have made a better title – which sports the kind of “groove” your uncle might present after fiddling with GarageBand for an hour and deciding that he’s a DJ now. It’s hard to know if ‘Take You Home’ has actually started or if it’s another one of those annoying Spotify ads asking you to sign up.

The lyrics are no better. She’s “not getting her phone out” in ‘Give You Up’, all she did today was “wake up and watch TV” in ‘Chances’. These inanities are all sung in her trademark vocal style, breathlessly jumping up half an octave every twenty seconds or so -  coincidentally the frequency with which I thought about turning this off and throwing the hi-fi out the window.

I’m not here to insult anyone, or anyone’s tastes. It’s a great big world, and there’s room for us all, and if this is your bag - and the figures quoted above indicate it must be somebody's - then good luck to you. That being said, when even the singer herself sounds this bored, it might be time to reach for something else, something with even a modicum of real emotion and soul.