Dido: Girl Who Got Away

I wouldn’t be surprised to hear that Dido has been listening to her debut, multi-million selling No Angel album again recently. Certainly, her fourth opus, Girl Who Got Away follows the blueprint of that world-conquering collection. It’s got the same slant on gentle electronica, overlaid with catchy crooning. It was written and produced by Dido and her brother, Faithless mainman Rollo Armstrong. She’s even hanging with the hippest rapper on the planet again. In 2000, Eminem’s sampling of ‘Thank You’ in ‘Stan’ helped to propel Dido to megastardom. In 2013, it’s Kendrick Lamar, who guests on ‘Let Us Move On’.

From the folky opener ‘No Freedom’, it’s clear that this isn’t going to deviate greatly from the mid-paced radio fare that made her a household name. While she undoubtedly suffered from over-saturation back then, the world may be ready for Dido’s gentle brand of electro-acoustic soul-searching again, particularly when it’s as upbeat and optimistic as ‘Go Dreaming’, the title track ‘The Girl Who Got Away’ and the aforementioned ‘No Freedom’. Elsewhere, melancholic reflection is prominent on ‘Happy New Year’ and ‘The Day Before We Went To War’. The exceptions that prove the rule include the acerbic ‘Blackbird’, its lyrical rancour couched behind an insistently bright melody, and the downright angry ‘End Of Night’ (“You were ugly when the beat kicked in and ugly when it left”).

Slow back-beat? Check. Bittersweet sympathies? Indeed. Bridget Jones with balls? Fair enough. As she avows on the gentle, acoustic ‘Sitting On The Roof Of The World’, “I don’t want to be different/ I just want to fit in.” Mission accomplished.