Careful What You Wish For

There’s just no point in judging a band like Texas by the same yardstick as this year’s models. They’re never going to start any Velvet revolutions, but sitting in some cavernous cattle hall or festival bombsite, one can be thankful for the sheer volume of hit tunes in their repertoire and Sharleen Spiteri’s showmanship.
The problems arise when Texas abandon the mantle of radio-rock singles machine and start messing around with token multiculturalism and alterna-chic. Exhibit one: the single ‘Carnival Girl’, a confused, fussy mess of MC action from Kardinal Offishall attached to a steal of the Isleys’ ‘Caravan Of Love’.
Exhibit two: Sharleen decked out in gung ho Patti Smith GI Jane gear on a sleeve whose graphics look like they were lifted from an old Adverts album.
So, Texas are a tonic on FM stations, but over long distances their derivativeness gets wearing. You don’t have to be a pop trainspotter to jot down a laundry list of refereces when listening to the first third of Careful What You Wish For – Garbage, Blondie and No Doubt could all have a day in court claiming royalties from ‘Telephone X’ and ‘Broken’, the former being Version 2.0-lite, the latter a piece of bluebeat fluff garnished with Auto-American bells and whistles on the (admittedly alluring) chorus.
But then it gets better. ‘I’ll See It Through’ is a strong torch ballad somewhere between Karen Carpenter’s warm vulnerability and Burt Bacharach songcraft. ‘Where Did You Sleep’ is a neat twist on an old Lennon title in which Spiteri sounds most confident in her own clothes. Thereafter, the influences are evenly distributed enough not to capsize the vessel: Moroder-style new wave disco (‘And I Dream’) and the title track, whose rinky-dink piano, thudding snare drum and nagging chorus could’ve been orchestrated by Rupert Hynde. Then there’s ‘Big Sleep’, a shameless shot at The Stones ‘Wild Horses’, but with enough grit to carry it off.
Overall, Careful What You Wish For sounds like a more coherent album than it should given the number of high-priced pop mechanics on the payroll (Trevor Horn, Mark ‘Spike’ Stent, Guy Chambers, Ian Broudie), but still one suspects Sharleen Spiteri has an inner life she’s not telling us about.