Sandi Thom - 'Smile... It Confuses People'

Whilst there is no doubt that Sandi can sing, and that she possesses a voice that sounds older than her years, this album sounds like the work of a little girl. Sandi belongs to the Nelly Furtado school of protest songs; missing the point and hitting simple rhyming words. This was also another reminder that too often young women seem to insist on singing about nothing but their experience of being young women - yawn. That Sandi cites seventies singer-songwriters as inspiration is in keeping with the predicatble nature of this experiment in British heartfelt-pap. Taking the worst bits from country, gospel, folk and pop, musically this is dull but lyrically, could bring on a sugar coma, "Lennon and McCartney always pulled you through" - hard to imagine what kind of trauma could be soothed with I Am The Walrus - but this was only one example of the sickly, adolescent idiocy driving this attempt at a Big Yellow Taxi. [Caroline Hurley]