Melody

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Spiteri Delivers
Melody is a beautiful album from Scottish soulstress 'Sharleen Spiteri'. She fuses soul with pop with ease and the sultry soothness of her voice can warm even the hardest of hearts. My favourite tracks are 'All The Times I Cried', where she dallies with McAlmont&Butler and 'Stop, I Don't Love You Anymore'. This collection, I believe, will stand the test of time and gets better with each listen. You can feel it in her delivery that she enjoyed making this album. Move over Texas, Sharleen is in the house.

Better than all of Texas put together...
As a longtime Texas fan I was excited and apprehensive about Sharleen Spiteri's solo debut. I have loved Texas since I discovered a song of theirs on the "Bend It Like Beckham" soundtrack. I went back thru their catalog and found that they had recorded an amazing number of catchy pop songs that really appealed to my appetite for beautifully crafted and well-produced music. Their greatest hits cd is one of my desert island discs--amazing for a band that I knew nothing about until 2002. So I was optimistic but cautious when I read that Spiteri was recording an album in the vein of Amy Winehouse and Duffy. What a revelation the resulting cd "Melody" is! Spiteri takes the Winehouse traditional soul genre and makes it her own--in spades. From the beginning track until the last one, I am more enthralled every time I listen to it. It is an amazing album by one of the richest voices in popular music. Listen--you won't be disappointed!

From Texas
"Melody" is the solo debut by lead vocalist of UK group Texas. Produced by Bernard Butler (he also produced Duffy's debut smash), it finds her mining that same lush, melodramatic sixties blue-eyed soul sound similar to Dusty Springfield or Nancy Sinatra. It's a real shame that Sharleen will inevitably be accused of jumping on the retro soul bandwagon (presently commandeered by the likes of Duffy, Amy Winehouse and Adele) as she had already (with her group) dipped her toes in this style a decade ago, but no one can accuse her of lacking soul. "Melody" is an album born out of heartbreak (she recently broke up with her partner of 10 years with whom she has a kid), thus a good chunk of the songs are downbeat swirling string-swathed pieces with lyrics to match; songs like "All the times I cried", the almost Trip Hop James Bond-esque "Melody" ("there's still no cure for you" she sings), the Marvin Gaye-like "I wonder" (lovely soothing harmonies),and "You let me down". The beautiful retro "I'm gonna haunt you" could have been done by Nancy Sinatra. Upping the tempo are the swinging "It was you", the horn sprinkled "Stop, I don't love you anymore" (sure to get her Duffy comparisons), the Motown-style pair of "Don't keep me waiting" and "Where did it go wrong", and the horn driven "Day tripping". Standout has got to be the tender lullaby-like closing track "Françoise" with softly chiming guitars, piano, and a hushed delivery from Sharleen. Stunning!! I must confess, this CD is very uncommercial sounding (I'm not surprised none of the singles has been a big hit) but it's still managed to peak at #3 in the UK and go gold. A very good album which I would highly reccommend to any music lover.

Let's get real
Ms Spiteri's album is one of the best albums from a female Pop singer in the last year. Only Joan As Policewoman's album "To Survive" comes close in the Western World, Carla Bruni's recent album is excellent, too. So if you feel like stuffing all the current crop of female "wannabe" pop singers in a blender, then put all your Duffy, Gabriella Cilmi, Lilly Allen, Missy Higgins, Pink and Sarah Blasko albums in the nearest dumpster and get into something with a bit more class - Sharleen Spiteri's very fine album.

Sultry vocals with lush, melodramatic pop music from the fifties and sixties.
The brilliant Italian/Scottish songstress behind the widely known Glasgow rock band, Texas, emerges as a solo artist with her long awaited debut album "Melody". Calling this her "Nancy Sinatra record", the Texas frontwoman unleashes a flurry of trumpets and parping saxophones. Her sultry, provocative voice sits well with Sixties soul. Sharleen has clearly been dreaming about lush, melodramatic pop music from the fifties and sixties: Motown, Bacharach, The Shangri-Las, Serge Gainsbourg, Lee Hazelwood, Righteous Brothers. It's hardly a revelation that Spiteri likes this sort of thing: she's been homaging Motown ("Black Eyed Boy"), channelling Marvin Gaye ("Say What You Want") and sampling Gainsbourg ("Guitar Song") with Texas for years. Sharleen Spiteri has picked a very apt time to unleash her inner Dusty Springfield. Not since the actual 60s have the 60s been so very "now" - but with Amy Winehouse, Adele and Duffy clogging up the charts with their bouffants and smoky eye make-up, is there room for Sharleen? Sure ! "Melody" explores fresh musical terrain. Whereas Texas sold 20 million albums by looking to The Pretenders, Motown and modern R&B for inspiration, Sharleen's first solo effort relies more on Fifties doo-wop, female harmony groups, Nancy Sinatra, and Francoise Hardy and Serge Gainsbourg's dreamy French pop, although a few hints of Motown do remain. She says she is proud to have written and produced the new album herself. "Being solo meant I could make the record I've always dreamed about", she says. "I'd done the Duffy thing, that big soul sound, with Texas". "I wanted to go back further, so I decided to delve into music that had always been with me but wasn't suited to Texas". Running her ideas past musical soulmate Johnny McElhone, the bassist in Texas, Sharleen began writing new songs during a break in the small Spanish hillside town of Gaucin. With songs such as "You Let Me Down", "Where Did It Go Wrong" and new single "All The Times I've Cried", the album is an intensely personal affair. In 2004, Sharleen split up with journalist Ashley Heath, her partner for ten years and father of her sixyearold daughter, Misty, and she admits that writing songs helped her to "make sense" of what was clearly a traumatic separation. Her first album outside the Texas womb is a break-up album in the tradition of Bob Dylan's "Blood on the Tracks". The titles alone - "All the Times I Cried", "Stop I Don't love You Any More" - ought to give Spiteri's ex, Ashley Heath, pause for thought. The slow-burning, gorgeous "You let Me down" is pure venom but the pain is leavened by the Motownesque throb she utilised on Texas's "Black Eyed Boy". But I do not see "Melody" as a downbeat, melancholy, dark album. Sure, she spends large chunks of the album telling us he "isn't the one" and serving up surprisingly bitter one-liners. "Something inside just died," she sings at one point, "it was you". But the songs are so polished, and Spiteri's vocals so sweet and controlled, that the bleakness of the lyrics isn't immediately obvious. "Melody" is an authentic, affectionate take on the pop sounds of the fifties and sixties, an homage that's sympathetic to the very last finger-snap. The singer's sultry melodies are a sure-fire hit.