Dido, Still On My Mind. Album Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * *

Not everybody likes the idea of Earl Grey tea being the signature tune in which to start their day, some prefer the idea of an infusion of exotic tastes to infiltrate their daily boundary, the skirmish between the beauty of sleep and the rigour of the time ahead which promises excitement, or arguably the same old, same old.

The comfort of routine is one that we strangely find missing from our lives when the personal world has become too entrenched in the crazy and the fondness for the cranked up cardiac feel of waiting for the return of the good time serenade; routine is what gives our lives a measure of grounding, we know what to expect, we almost revel in the passion of being able to say to ourselves that life is Still On My Mind but I am happy here and content.

The trouble with the Earl Gray morning scenario is that life stuck in the routine can be quickly seen as bland, not enough peaks and troughs to set the days apart, and when you have not stepped out and blinked a few times into the face of others, if all you have done is be comfortable, then it hardly surprising to find that your reflection on life is one steeped in calm, the unruffled and the unhappily serene, there is no bounce, no flip of the groove, no sensation, just happily ordinary.

It is perhaps with sadness that the insightfulness that came hand in hand with the singer Dido has been replaced with that sense of the comfortable, the spring in which caused Eminem to sample her rather enjoyable track Thank You, in which songs such as White Flag, Life For Rent and Sand In My Shoes had all the beautiful hallmarks of bringing a crowd together in one voice, across gender and age, it didn’t matter, what was there was an honest appreciation and mirroring of life seen through the eyes of a young woman.

Time has moved on, barely a sniff of new music, barely an appearance, and it is that reflection that makes the first new album since 2013’s Girl Who Got Away a moment in which you can only wonder why now, however glorious it is too hear this angelic voice across the airwaves again, it seems there really is nothing new under the sun.

Dido has never really lost the fans, it takes more than a serial sense of quiet to dislodge affection from the crowd, but aside from the tracks You Don’t Need A God, Some Kind Of Love and Walking By, the sense of the same infiltrates the album as though a cup of Earl Grey is on permanent offer at the table, and there is no other beverage to be found.

As much as the world has needed a voice like Dido’s a spirit in which a painted picture comes to life with colour, in Still On My Mind, unfortunately the world has not been over blessed this time; a true shame, an album that is perhaps just far too still.

Ian D. Hall