Errmmm. Don’t really know what to say. On the one hand it’s a remarkably accomplished and well realised album full of joyous, cloud-bursting sunshine and perfectly poised intentions and on the other it’s a wordy, slightly irritating slice of militant miracle-love served up by a posh bird with aspirations pertaining to poetry and jazz. Lyrically it shuffles awkwardly amidst a hailstorm of polysyllables and extended metaphors, crawling bravely toward the profound but without ever seriously challenging it’s defences. In fact, to use a typically overbearing Hicks conceit, she stands at the foot of the window of her soul staring blindly at her own reflection. She talks a lot, but she doesn’t really say anything. And it all comes to a head on ‘I Love You More’ where Hicks throws off her inhibitions and ploughs headlong into ‘bullshit’ territory. You remember those English types at college arsing around in the refectory all day spoiling your view of ‘Neighbours’ with their wild gesticulations and loud obnoxious voices? Well, it’s just like you never graduated.
Let’s put it this way: she celebrated the release of smoochy, gospelly single ‘Be Myself’ by squeezing ten seconds of 20 people just ‘being themselves’ and launched it via her YouTube channel and MySpace.
She’s big in South Africa, won many jazz awards with her band HoneyRiders and is a Cambridge student-sort to boot.
Bit like Ray Lamontagne, Beth Orton and Norah Jones with an armful of Sylia Plath and Virginia Woolf books at their disposal and only 55 minutes to transcribe them.