I am self-avowedly a fan of rock and roll. I love punk, I adore grunge (or whatever the hell you want to call it), alt-rock got me through most of the 90’s, and there’s nothing quite as good as some good ole fashioned blues. I can even stomach folk, and small select doses of country and metal. So why, I hear you clamour, am I reviewing Dido’s debut No Angel?
Good question. I also like pop in small doses, and Dido really hit the spot mid-way through the past year when I was in need of some pretty straightforward pop music. Besides, to call Dido pop rather sullies the poor woman, who is a cut above all the semi-digested pap that usually passes for the charts. Besides, she’s also quite a depressing singer, bringing moodiness into the forefront of modern day music instead of allowing the processed beats to take her into mindless optimistic jingles. Even her stage-name, Dido, carries a certain weight. Of course, her detractors haven’t hesitated to insert a strategically placed extra L into her name in a humorous attempt to insult her, but by taking the name of Aeneas’ wronged lover from Virgil’s Aeneid, she rather supports my theory that she has something to say. Alright, it’s all a bit larger-than-life misery, but The Cure have been getting away with it for almost three decades. She elevates herself to mythical status, and the best songs on the album are, admittedly, a tad on the overwrought and angsty side.
But when you are faced with a piece of music as toweringly powerful as opener Here with me, it’s hard not to be disarmed. Some editions of the album also feature a pretty nifty acoustic guitar version which is almost as good as the original. The various filter-sweeps fade in and out, but by the first chorus a lightly strummed acoustic guitar adds a certain touch of humanity to Dido’s mournful vocals. And then the briefest of respites, followed by the full, pounding drum-machine, giving the song weight and pace. Of course, there had to be an orchestral backing on a song like this, but I can safely say that Dido gets away with it on this one. Of course, she and her producer don’t have the ingenuity that Portishead might have to incorporate orchestral music (in fact, the whole album seems to link Portishead style trip-hop with acoustic intelligent pop), but here they do an admirable job.
Hunter is another familiar face, almost as enjoyable as the opener, but ultimately slightly less interesting. The beat is much more conventional, the backing vocals are a tad strained and the orchestral backing verges on the predictable. Still enjoyable, but a slighter composition which rides on the successful arrangement of Here with me and strives to imitate it. On the other hand, the song is mostly led by acoustic guitar, and I would really like to hear the song stripped back to this basic instrument to see what happens. I suspect that a whole better song emerges.
For the most part the album ticks over in a vaguely pleasant background way, aside from a few select highlights. Don’t think of me, for instance, pales against the grandeur displayed by the previous two numbers, and is simply less interesting. Unfortunately, much of the album does tend towards being slightly simpler and a little boring. Even though the vocal intro to My lover’s gone is a tender touching piece, the song rather wears as it progresses. For some reason Dido also becomes a breathier version of Sinead O’Connor. All you want starts with a promising melody, but I get the strong impression that a producer has rather dismantled the sound in order to appeal to the pop audience: to be fair, it’s happened to David Gray too. However good Babylon may be, most of White Ladder seems like a producer-led sabotage of interesting folk-inflected pop music. Too many beats and bleeps sink David Gray’s writing into a quagmire of late 90’s pop conventions. How boring.
Thank you is another familiar face, and the third major hit from the album, even though the song was hijacked by Eminem. Dido once again finds that her best material is the angstiest (yes, I made that word up), and her saddened vocals really capture the longing of a person stuck in a routine but able to unwind emotionally. As a result, the song becomes more and more feelgood as it progresses, which is a shame because the first verse is absolutely wonderful and I wish more had been made of it. However, the fast chord changes are replaced by the second verse, and the melody becomes almost imperceptibly more pedestrian.
No matter how many times I play this album, the second half from Thank you onwards, has always failed to make any sort of an impression on me. Honestly OK has dark dense trippy rhythm, but a very faint and forgettable melody. Slide goes on for ages without changing in any interesting way; Isobel, another successful single, has an interesting beat, but I never quite got into it. I’m no angel borrows and rehashes guitar rhythms from around the album, and throws in a crackling trip-hop beat for good measure: nice, but nevertheless a bit of a non-entity. Finally comes My life which uses a piano for a central melody, and sounds like a bluesy lament. This is probably the best song in the second half of the album, but it is so sharply understated that you almost don’t notice it go by. I believe some editions feature Take my hand as an extra track. Once again, it is a very pleasant melody, but the guitar work doesn’t do anything strikingly different from the rest of the album. The processed beat and synth stabs that emerge mid-way through the song are also quite annoying, and for me, ruin the song. But anyway, maybe that’s just me.
Dido is well-worth a listen to anybody who likes moody music, especially towards the electronic end of the market: Portishead and Depeche Mode spring to mind. As far as I’m concerned, this is as interesting as most pop music acts get, and I would very much like to see whether Dido will develop and turn out to be a great performer, or whether she will do the easy thing and re-write Here with me for the rest of her recording career. There are promising moments on the album, although she could do with ditching her current producer who would probably drag her to the level of dance-based pop if he/she possibly could (and thereby make bucketfuls of money, depressingly). Her singles are also way beyond the rest of her album, which is never a good sign. But there is still a lot to be seen from Dido. Let’s hope that there is a positive development for the future, in store for a generation cheated into listening to mass-produced brain-deadening pop.
Dido was five when she stole her first recorder. This didn t lead to prison but rather to her entrance one year later into the Guildhall School of Mus...More at Buy.com Marketplaces
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