Gabrielle Aplin: English Rain

She may be six months shy of her 21st birthday but Gabrielle Aplin already has YouTube fame, iTunes glory and a UK No.1 single under her belt. The then-teenager first came to attention three years ago when her uploaded acoustic covers made her the latest internet sensation. Subsequent EP releases saw her top the iTunes charts and last December’s cover of Frankie Goes To Hollywood’s ‘The Power Of Love’ for a TV advert resulted in her knocking Ollie Murs off top spot in her homeland.

That Holly Johnson-approved take on Frankie’s classic is here but stripped of the TV visuals, it seems a little staid and stilted.
Unfortunately, that’s the case throughout most of Aplin’s debut. The problem isn’t her voice, which is sweet and breathy in all the right places, nor the tunes, which will have most listeners tapping their extremities. The issue is with Aplin’s lyrics, which veer ever deeper into Hallmark territory the further you delve into the album. It’s a shame, because English Rain starts well, with the rollicking acoustic folksiness of ‘Panic Cord’, the self-empowering ‘Keep On Walking’ and former single ‘Please Don’t Say You Love Me’, which hinted at a maturity beyond her years.
Maybe Aplin was under commercial pressure to follow up her hit single quickly, with the result that the album feels rushed. Whatever the reason, from here on, English Rain descends into cliché (‘Home’), overblown production (‘Salvation’, ‘Start Of Time’) and the kind of lyrics that say loads but mean very little (‘Alive’, ‘Human’, ‘November’).
Given the quality of what went before, the conclusion has to be that the 20-year-old Wiltshire native just needed more time to hone her craft, but with the ADD nature of what passes for modern culture and record labels’ fear of missing the new folk zeitgeist, that was probably always going to be a pipe dream. The result? For much of English Rain, Aplin comes across like a Laura Marling or Tori Amos wannabe when in truth she has a lot more to offer. It’ll still probably sell shed-loads. And Aplin undoubtedly has the talent to grow into an artist of real stature. In the meantime, cut her some slack. All these years on, I’m not sure I’d want people poring over what I wrote at the age of 20...

Key Track: ‘Panic Cord’