Melody

The Sunday Age

Sunday August 17, 2008

Miki Perkins

2.5/5

MELODY

Sharleen Spiteri, Mercury

Please, no. Please not another retro-sounding, '60s-style, female vocal album. Please. Amy Winehouse wooed us with beehive panache and her aptitude for swearing, and Welsh singer Duffy successfully boarded the Motown-sound train. But now Texas front-woman Sharleen Spiteri wants in on the act with her first solo album, not realising the Zeitgeist is well and truly sick of soaring strings, belching brass and tambourines. Apparently, this was the soul album the pop veteran always wanted to make. And she does a competent job of channelling Nancy Sinatra's These Boots Are Made for Walking through I'm Going To Haunt You, or the Supremes on Day Tripping. Her well-exercised vocals add a velvety touch to slower numbers such as You Let Me Down, but the upbeat tracks are '60s-by-numbers, with finger-clicking, trumpet riffs and support singers crooning "woo woo" in the background.

Key track: Don't Keep Me Waiting - farting saxophones underpin this surprisingly uplifting little number. -- Miki Perkins

© 2008 The Sunday Age

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