Put Your Money On

Aine Duffy presents the world with an album nobody’s particularly been clamouring for – (I can’t imagine a record company meeting in which a ponytailed suit says “gothy, metally, melodramatic, ‘tribal’ dance-influenced avant-pop will really capture that lucrative but elusive 18-to-35 female, Marlborough Light smoking, snowboarding, legal secretary demographic”) – but which, quite possibly, the world and its wife really wants. There are hints of other great female vocalists like PJ Harvey and Tori Amos here and it’s all refreshingly delivered in Áine Duffy’s own accent. Generally speaking its superbly accomplished and has a real spark of talent at its core. Here and there, the spectres of 1990s pop-metal and ethereal goth chanteuses haunt the arrangements like confused murder victims – and due to a personal trauma (I once snogged Fred Durst) this stops me falling head over heels for this. But combining very interesting arrangements and quite an idiosyncratic vocal talent, this is a record that could become a sleeper success.