Kelli Ali - Rocking Horse

Kelli Ali has had an eclectic musical journey since her tenure with Sneaker Pimps, working with Marilyn Manson, Brian Ferry, and Linkin Park. To her bow she has decided to add the string of 'nu-folk', and with Rocking Horse she's drawn upon a batch of songs written during a travelling session around the desert plains of Mexico and California. On a superficial level this reinvention seems reminiscent of the queen on pop, Madonna. Whereas Madonna cheerfully cherry-picks whatever she fancies during her periodic reinventions, happily settling for post-modern facsimiles of the latest zeitgeist, Ali seems to have the opposite problem of trying too hard to return to 'salt of the earth' music. Cue many songs about conifers and mountain paths, while guitars are finger-picked and flutes played rather tastefully in the background. When it works it is undoubtedly very pretty (Heaven's Door), although it probably wasn't Ali's intention to write music that could soundtrack polite conversations in Starbucks. [Ewen Millar]