THE DEEP BLUE

Charlotte Hatherley (album)

I don't know about you, but I generally find that the best music tends to come from people who are left to their own devices and are just left alone to do whatever they want and to hell with chart placings. After all, if too many people get involved and try to make your music marketable, you could end up releasing the sort of stuff that LeAnn Rimes puts out, and you don't want that. You really don't. So here we are then, ex-guitarist from Ash, second album, more of the same jangly guitar pop then, yes? No. For a start, the album opens with a short instrumental called Cousteau which sounds exactly like the sort of song they sometimes use for underwater sequences in TV shows, and that leads straight into Be Thankful, which is a slow-paced little number. This is where it gets interesting, though, because the sound here is much fuller and far more layered than her first solo album. Guitars are not the be all and end all, in fact anything that looks like it'll do the job is used and it works an absolute treat. In fact, it's not until I Want You To Know that the guitars and drums get a proper workout and boy do they get it – and this leads me onto a minor rant. If you ask me, it's little short of a disgrace that this single only got to No.108, but there you go, that's what happens when I say I like something, I go and put a dirty great hex on it. Back to the album then, and it looks like somebody's been rooting through a crate marked "Musical Instruments That You Wouldn't Expect On This Album", because there's violins, saxophones, trombones, cellos… and then there's Behave. It was given a limited release at the back end of last year, but really deserves a full re-issue because it's a gem of a song. If you can get over the fact that the guitar sounds so distorted and doddery it sounds like it's about to go to the great gig in the sky then you're in for a proper treat. Love's Young Dream sounds a bit like XTC, which is nice but also a little spooky as XTC's Andy Partridge helped out on Dawn Treader, incidentally the only song that wasn't solely written by Ms Hatherley. Roll Over (Let It Go) is very nearly the first proper disappointment of the album, but after a tedious first half it suddenly kicks into life, however the really big gun is left right to the end… sort of. Siberia is five and a half minutes of magnificence, and crams so much into its running time that for a short spell halfway through the song changes tack completely. From being a proper rocky workout, it suddenly starts sounding as though somebody's done a remix of it, hidden it in the song and somehow got away with it. Those crazy kids, eh? This has to be a single, end of. However, although it's the last listed track, the running time of 12:41 rather gives the game away that there's more afterwards and if you wait a couple of minutes after the end of Siberia, there's another song. I wasn't expecting it, so I shan't spoil it for you by telling you what it's like. Kind, aren't I? Anyway, to sum up, this is a great, great set of songs and a huge jump forwards from her first album. It's not perfect, but who cares? If this is the sort of thing that Charlotte Hatherley can come up with when she's left to do things her way, it does make you wonder what she'll do for the third album. I'm also going to award extra marks because not only does she not start the album with the current single (a tactic I despise, after all you know what that sounds like, you want to hear the new stuff instead), she also hasn't named the album after one of her songs… in fact, unless I'm mistaken the title doesn't even appear in the lyrics. Buy this album, you'll feel better for it, trust me.