For about a decade now, music journalists and the record-buying public have been at odds. This is all Oasis’s fault. In 1995, reviewers announced that their second album, (What’s the Story) Morning Glory, was nothing special. It became a pivotal release. Two years on, critics awarded its follow-up, Be Here Now, full marks. The public snapped it up, only to start returning the album in droves when it became obvious that it was drivel.
Since then, the public have been deeply suspicious of music journalists and the artists they garland with praise. Critics disdain almost any rock act that becomes successful — no five-star reviews for Robbie Williams, the Stereophonics or Avril Lavigne. Or, indeed, for Dido Florian Cloud de Bounevialle Armstrong, who overcame what must have been a traumatic time at the christening font to sell 12-million copies of her debut album, No Angel.
A singer-songwriter with a trip-hoppy bent, Dido was clearly not going to alter the face of music. It was difficult to see how No Angel could rouse such a degree of ire among rock critics — but it did.
It would be nice to report that Dido’s second album, Life for Rent (Arista), is strong enough to reveal her detractors as snobs. Sadly, it proves a little more complicated than that. The single White Flag is a superb, confidently written pop song, possessed of a chorus impossible to dislodge from your memory. But its trundling breakbeats and strings also serve notice that it is not radically different from its predecessor.
That doesn’t really matter when the songwriting is strong, as on the title track or the closing See the Sun. But when it falters, Life for Rent seems too wan to hold your attention. Many of its song titles resemble the names of chick-lit novels — Mary’s in India, See You When You’re 40, Sand in My Shoes — and maybe there is something slightly cynical and forced about Dido’s approach to her audience after all.
What you’re left with is a weirdly equivocal album. Its best moments suggest that Armstrong is unfairly maligned, that her songwriting talent is so undeniable that even people who don’t really like music cannot help but be charmed. At worst, it’s twee and bland, aural wallpaper that only someone who didn’t really like music could care about. Either way, it isn’t going to change anyone’s mind about Dido. — Â