sia: some people have real problems

As with previous offerings Sia’s latest album runs amok through the many different facets of her personality. Her continued strategy of delivering stylistic tangents that encompass the best of electronica, R&B, soul and pop has made the listener’s journey to date never less than boring, though admittedly frustrating at times when the ideas haven’t quite hung together to create a whole. As a result, I have dipped in and out of her work, never quite reaching a tipping point either way. Kudos to the lady, then, as Some People Have Real Problems delivers another pleasing blend of musical schizophrenia but with added progression of thought from the first to the final song. Is this Sia’s coming of age album?

Opener ‘Little Black Sandals’ is the first of a number of tracks addressing the end of unhappy relationships, true or fictional, and introduces the repeated use of simple piano lines and lush orchestration that underpin Sia’s most potent weapon: her voice. All at once enormous, brittle and terrifically fragile, she has also clearly been working on her ability to switch from slightly eccentric to honey-larynxed chanteuse. ‘Day Too Soon’ could be a massive Gabrielle(-with)-style single given the right market conditions before becoming a favourite on late-night DJ slots. ‘Death By Chocolate’ (sample lyric: “Death by chocolate is a myth / this I know, because I lived”) is another where this new-found warmth and depth to the vocals imbues the heartbreak with real poignance. The choral crescendo that ends this song is in perfect context as Sia reassures a grieving girl: “It won’t be long, you will grow strong / up up and away.”

Where are the tangents, I hear you ask? How about ‘Academia’, an almost too clever lyric about how noughts and ones go together: “You will be my alphabet and I will be your calculator / and together we’ll work out on the escalator”. Or maybe the percussive ‘Playground’, full of Sia’s refusal to grow up: “I’ll be sure to write you from the war / put your guns away, it’s teatime”? How about ‘The Girl You Lost To Cocaine’, a thrusting peacock of a song most reminiscent of the material from 2000’s brash, attitudinal Healing Is Difficult? How about the delightful verse shuffle of ‘Lentil’ that gives way to a swelling West End musical chorus cosseted by strings and multi-tracked backing vocals? If not all over the place, the album is at least well travelled.

Sia has not been particularly prolific, this album is her most complete since 2000’s Colour The Small One. However, it shows songwriting maturity and, most impressively, an acute understanding of album aesthetics missing from so many artists who, forced by their producers and labels to surround a hit with mediocre filler, have all but killed the joy of the journey from first song to last. I would suggest they are the artists with real problems; if Sia continues to mine this rich seam, she should have very few. Tipping point achieved.

[Monkey Puzzle; January 14, 2008]

Written by: Paul Woodgate

Tags: sia, some people have real problems

This entry was posted on Wednesday, July 16th, 2008 at 8:40 pm and is filed under albums & EPs, reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.