Unfashionable I may be, but I think Natalie Imbruglia’s pretty underrated. Her pop credentials may not appeal to everyone, but I personally furnish her with a lot of kudos for having transferred from a soap opera to music far more successfully than most who have travelled the same path. Successfully in the sense that she’s produced some genuinely great music, as opposed to merely accumulating massive sales. Nat’s debut Left of the Middle was a bit of a  mini-watershed, a quality pop rock album which resolutely refused to be crap, which many might have predicted.

Since then Imbruglia’s been far from overwhelmingly productive, her albums all being four years apart. Come to Life is her fourth, arriving rather later than her singles collection, Glorious, which itself emerged two years ago now. This new set of ten songs is largely in the vein of her 2005 album Counting Down the Days, which continued her transition from the sometimes surprisingly aggressive songs of the debut. Whilst I’d (unrealistically) hoped for a return of sorts to that hard sound of songs like ‘Don’t You Think’, the soft but varied and interesting sound of these tracks is still very satisfying.

One of the biggest successes of Come to Life is the way it’s been tracklisted. Deftly avoiding the perennial mistake of frontloading all the upbeat songs, the album instead comes across as thoroughly rounded. What the early part of the album does have is two songs in a row – ‘Lukas’ and ‘Fun’ – which were written by Coldplay’s Chris Martin. Martin’s improving songwriting, displayed on his band’s recent career-best work, suits Imbruglia very well indeed and whilst you can well imagine Coldplay performing these songs, Imbruglia’s efforts are great.

Instrumentally it’s a pretty lush sound that’s being displayed here – there’s a particularly tasteful string section on ‘Twenty’ and ‘WYUT’ has a odd but gorgeous mixture of guitar and synthesizer sounds which really makes you sit up and pay attention. Single “Want” and “Cameo” use machined beats and twinkling synths, which are a tad outside of Imbruglia’s comfort zone but she still gives a good account of herself. Overall, Come to Life is exactly the kind of glossy faux-serious music a lot of people turn their noses up at, but it’s damn good fun and is as good as any pure, commercial pop record I’ve consumed this year.

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Conventional wisdom presumably dictates that I should be eager to expose much-hyped Australian pop outfit Empire of the Sun as vacuous pretenders, a pair of washed-up musos hiding their talentlessness behind a facade of kitsch costumes, extravagant videos and daft, pretentious album covers. But having listened to their full-length debut Walking on a Dream, having given it the chance to really sink in, I don’t actually feel quite that way inclined. Don’t get me wrong – there’s a thick vein of superficiality and glitz running through just about everything that Luke Steele and Nick Littlemore do, but that’s not to say that this isn’t a fairly decent album, a solid set of ten songs which approach worthlessness just as rarely as they approach true greatness.

Surely we’ve got to concede that the title track, at the very least, must be recognized as a gorgeous slice of electropop. The puddle-depth of the lyrics and the overt, self-consciously retro nature of the synths in particular can’t smother the infectiousness of the best tracks that Empire have to offer, and ‘Walking on a Dream’ itself is definitely the prime example. The lazily cycling guitar riff, the warmly inviting beats, the appealing chorus and the presence of that yearning question: (“is it real now?”) – it’s thoroughly enjoyable stuff. The most fitting comparison I can think of for Empire’s best moments is actually Weird Tapes/Memory Cassette – the same laid-back retro faux-disco is here, the same heavily processed vocals and sleepy, dreamy atmosphere. Other successful outings for the band are mostly in the first half of the record – the mad vocals of “Delta Bay” and the lilting, pleasant instrumental that is ‘Country’.

Unfortunately, the infectious melodies and outright catchiness of the first few songs never fully reappear in the remainder of the album, and as the tracks lengthen towards the end, the album becomes increasingly tiring and gruelling, which is exactly what it needed to avoid being. It’s not often I’d advise a band to attempt to replicate one song more often, but had they tried to fill Walking on a Dream with more sweet pop gems it would have been better for them than relying on the odd swagger of songs like ‘Swordfish Hotkiss Night’ to hold our attention. That said, this is by no means a bad album, and in fact none of its tracks are in any way wholly unenjoyable. Instead, it’s a middling electro listen that charges forward as often as it drifts.
60%

Empire of the Sun on MySpace

Let’s get this out of the way before anything: Sarah McIntosh is 17 years old. Now of course that brings to mind some pimply bad memories. The conundrum in reviewing a young person’s album is that you know what you were capable of when you were at this age – not too much. I was lucky if I wore matching socks let alone make an EP that’s spreading like a small brush fire in the UK blog circuit. So before you take the perfunctory Web  2.0 route and skip to the bottom of the page to read the rating (ahh don’t do it!), please read my lips, à la George Bush Sr: “The Good Natured is a work in progress.”

The Newbury wunderkind wears her electronic influences like a awkward carpet instead of a sleek dress. You can hear The Postal Service indietronica mopiness on “Rose” and the dancey hop of ‘Warriors.’ Her voice will immediately perk the ears of Kate Nash/Adele/Lilly Allen fans, but her vocal range is less warrior-like and more grounded. The three-note range continues on the punch-upped Gary Numan synth-lines of ‘Ivory Tower.’  The chip-tune set will fall in love with this stuff but the lyrics are dedicedly flat:”but please hold me close.” Warriors is pleasant like its creator’s namesake so you can’t fault it too much for getting the lithe piano lines of ‘Rose’ right. “Heart of Stone” is Ladytron without the bitterness of age and possibly that’s where my disconnect with the material lies. This is music tailormade for the locker roooms and chat rooms after school. A full album from McIntosh may reveal a deeper lyrical intent but as Warriors stands now, it remains a piece of music in tired retrograde.

“Warriors” is another offender on this EP’s four tracks. It plunks along in a vacuum. The springy bassline and organ lines puff into the air. Don’t even get me started on the electronic drums. Despite this being the EP’s best track it grows tedious before it ends. McinTosh repeats the phrase:”I’m crying out/I’m crying out/in the middle of the night/where are you now” and the drama in her voice is quite limp.

With the slapdash production of a bedroom project many will invariably sing the praises of this overtly cute project that married a salvaged keyboard with a cute Newbury lass, but you have to cry bullocks! (even in print that looks funny to these Amercian eyes). Nothing is funny about people past the age of 18 prancing around to this.
47%

The Good Natured on MySpace