Search - Holly Beth Vincent :: Super Rocket Star

Spectacular return to form

Gabriel Egan | Stratford-upon-Avon | 12/24/2009

(5 out of 5 stars)

"When you compare this album with Holly Beth Vincent's previous one, 'America' with her band The Oblivious, it starts to look like what's held her back in the past is working with other people. Here Vincent plays most of the instruments, using a drum machine for at least a few of the songs (it's getting hard to tell these days, the machines can be so good) and adapts her vocal style by getting closer to the microphone and singing more softly. This does not make the music any 'softer': Vincent's witty and inventive lyrics are, as always, combined with her characteristically mesmerizing and insanely catchy punk-pop guitar riffs. The differences are that she's now singing better than she ever has before and the additional instruments in the mix (in particular, excellently played keyboards) don't, as they have before, sound like someone else is trying to muscle in on a good Vincent tune and spoil it.



A few reviews refer to a 'jazz' influence on this album, but I can't hear it and it would put me off if I could -- this is pure, perfect pop music. To get a sense of how this album sounds, think of the best Holly and the Italians tunes from the past, take away the bits that weren't perfect, and add more of what made them so wonderful. It's awfully well produced too. Two of the song titles appear twice: these are remixes. In each case, you get one electro-pop version and one rock-and-roll version, both brilliant."