It’s taken Diana Vickers three years to follow up from 2010's debut album Songs From The Tainted Cherry Tree, so has she spent this time wisely evolving her sound? In short no - but this is a good thing. ‘Music to Make Boys Cry’ is an album with a similar feel of bright and breezy songs but with more of a tilt towards electro-pop than her debut was.
The title track and album opener skips along in a carefree
manner and that is the theme throughout. It’s easy to get swept up into Diana
Vickers’ world which appears to be filled with dizzying fairytale romance,
evident on songs like Cinderella (“Because for you I would lose the both
of my shoes”), Dead Heat (“It’s not a matter of life and death but if I
had to choose between love and breath”) and Boy In Paris (“Dancing in the
dark with the boy I met in Paris”). All this makes for a strong case that
someone is definitely loved up and the songs certainly evoke images of those
classic black and white romance films that get shown on a Saturday afternoon on
BBC2.
It’s not all joyful love stories however as Mr.
Postman depicts a lovelorn tale that aims to imitate a 60s girlgroup-esque
songwriting style but kind of falls somewhere between The Marvelettes Please
Mr. Postman and Britney’s E-mail My Heart without being as good as
either. Closing track Blame Game is one of the album's strongest tracks and
is sonically quite adventurous in terms of electro-pop. The album was
co-written by Miranda Cooper of pop creating behemoths Xenomania and Blame
Game certainly has the feel of a Xenomania-lite production and wouldn’t be
out of place as a Girls Aloud album track - which if anyone has taken the time
to listen to the quality of Girls Aloud album tracks will know this is quite a
compliment.
In many ways ‘Music to Make Boys Cry’ is quite similar to
Carly Rae Jepsen’s 2012 album 'Kiss': fun pop songs that fizz along
splendidly yet something about them fails to capture the attention of the
general public beyond pop lovers, which is a real shame as this album really
deserves to have a wider audience. The disadvantage it has is that it does take
very few musical risks but nor does it wish too - it’s the perfect soundtrack
to getting ready before a Friday night on the tiles as you pre-load on the
Lambrini.
4/5
Gizzle's Choice:
* Music To Make Boys Cry
* Dead Heat
* Blame Game
Listen: 'Music To Make Boys Cry' is available now.
Review courtesy of Stefan Jackson - follow him on Twitter @stefanatical
Review courtesy of Stefan Jackson - follow him on Twitter @stefanatical