Stop Holding Out On Us, U.K.

After their wily concealing of Lewis Taylor (which I dutifully exposed earlier this spring), it appears that, once again, the British have been holding out on us musically, this time in the realm of female pop singers. Oh sure, they pitched us Joss Stone, Fergie, Corinne Bailey Rae, and Amy Winehouse, with varying degrees of merit, thinking we'll be appeased while they remain determined to hold back the best of them all: one Emma Bunton (better known to most as the former Baby Spice of Spice Girls fame).

Her U.S. debut, Free Me (2005), is one of the best mainstream pop albums of the decade. Unfortunately, her follow-up, Life in Mono, is not available this side of the pond after being released in the U.K. last fall. Nevertheless, Free Me mixes 60's Motown girl group harmonies/hooks with bossa nova/Latin Jazz flair, with a nod to Burt Bacharach-style composition, and modern pop drum programming. It's modern, yet retro, and it all hangs together gloriously.

But don't take my word for it, from the IGN review:
As with her work with the Girls, the 12 songs included here are pure bred pop, focusing on an incredibly light and airy musical motif that is inescapably catchy. And while her previous work sounded like she was trying to hard to be the next Madonna/Britney/J-Lo heir, here she takes a decidedly different tact, branching out into pre-fab '60s Euro pop terrain to rekindle the kitsch and be-pop aesthetics of the Shirley Bassey, Tom Jones, and Burt Bacharach with a sense of buoyant homage and retro love.

A lot of the success of the album comes from the fact that Bunton was wise enough to employ actual musicians, accomplished studio musicians at that, instead of relying on sample driven, ProTools laden production. The result is a full sounding album that pops, bristles, and bounces with a vibrant sense of self-awareness. The end result is an album that is both a throwback to a time when pop music was witty, smart, and resilient and a fresh sounding blast of PoPoMo dance music.

Oh, and it doesn't hurt that she looks like this:



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