Natalie Imbruglia – Come to Life

Unfashionable I may be, but I think Natalie Imbruglia's pretty underrated. Her pop credentials may not appeal to everyone, but I personally furnish her with a lot of kudos for having transferred from a soap opera to music far more successfully than most who have travelled the same path. Successfully in the sense that she's produced some genuinely great music, as opposed to merely accumulating massive sales. Nat's debut Left of the Middle was a bit of a mini-watershed, a quality pop rock album which resolutely refused to be crap, which many might have predicted.Since then Imbruglia's been far from overwhelmingly productive, her albums all being four years apart. Come to Life is her fourth, arriving rather later than her singles collection, Glorious, which itself emerged two years ago now. This new set of ten songs is largely in the vein of her 2005 album Counting Down the Days, which continued her transition from the sometimes surprisingly aggressive songs of the debut. Whilst I'd (unrealistically) hoped for a return of sorts to that hard sound of songs like 'Don't You Think', the soft but varied and interesting sound of these tracks is still very satisfying.One of the biggest successes of Come to Life is the way it's been tracklisted. Deftly avoiding the perennial mistake of frontloading all the upbeat songs, the album instead comes across as thoroughly rounded. What the early part of the album does have is two songs in a row - 'Lukas' and 'Fun' - which were written by Coldplay's Chris Martin. Martin's improving songwriting, displayed on his band's recent career-best work, suits Imbruglia very well indeed and whilst you can well imagine Coldplay performing these songs, Imbruglia's efforts are great.Instrumentally it's a pretty lush sound that's being displayed here - there's a particularly tasteful string section on 'Twenty' and 'WYUT' has a odd but gorgeous mixture of guitar and synthesizer sounds which really makes you sit up and pay attention. Single "Want" and "Cameo" use machined beats and twinkling synths, which are a tad outside of Imbruglia's comfort zone but she still gives a good account of herself. Overall, Come to Life is exactly the kind of glossy faux-serious music a lot of people turn their noses up at, but it's damn good fun and is as good as any pure, commercial pop record I've consumed this year.

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