Sarah Cracknell

Lipslide (Instinct)
by Michael McCarthy

Sarah Cracknell has spent nearly a decade fronting the UK dance pop group Saint Etienne, and Lipslide is her debut solo album. Just as she has not divorced Saint Etienne in terms of the outfit’s line up, she hasn’t divorced their timeless pop sensibilities either (while I haven’t heard all of Etienne’s work, I’ve heard enough of it to say that many of this album’s tunes are in the same mellow-yet-danceable vein). Cracknell’s voice is very gentle, if not entirely soothing; it caresses most of these songs like a warm spring breeze against your face. Likewise, the lyrics are very safe, arguably even more so than today’s mainstream, non-intellectual pop. There’s plenty of emotion here, but these songs don’t ask you to fuck Cracknell – they ask you, whispering in your ear, to love her. At times it’s a bit eerie because her voice and the melodies call to mind The Carpenters in their heyday, so much so during “Ready or Not” that it’s like getting a phone call from the dead. Still, you can’t call the whole disc a throwback. “Desert Baby,” for one, is chock full of enough electronic beats and textures to arouse the Pet Shop Boys.
(www.instinctrecords.com)