There are a lot of singer-songwriters out there making music like this. I mean, it seems as if I've reviewed about a dozen of them the last year. That said, there's always room for carefully-crafted emotive pop like this, I guess. Melody by Melody English is at times a bit precious, but it's also got enough songs that have an earthy bit of heart about them that I feel like I should write about the record.
"Affect Me" is full of the same sort of weariness that Aimee Mann conveyed when she sang, while "Badlands" is more complex. The melody on this one is so good that one almost wishes the singer added more layers of instrumentation to things as it's a bit stark, but "Aruge" makes up for that. This cut, one of the brighter things here, buzzes with real New Wave energy, even as "Self Be True" reminded me a very tiny bit of music from both Nilsson and Rickie Lee Jones. Melody English possesses talent. There's no doubt about that. I just wish the material here was livelier, or more varied. With fuller musical accompaniment, English's voice could carry this kind of thing further into the stratosphere.
Melody is out on Friday via House of Feelings.
[Photo: Amanda Hakan]