As the first decade of the twenty-first century shrugs its way to a close, musos worldwide are trying to figure out the songs and the scenes which made the naughties (ugh. Please can someone come up with a better name for the next decade?) so special. As far as this hack’s concerned, the naughties was the decade where pop stopped being a dirty word, finally attaining that most elusive of accolades ”“ alternative acceptance. Sure, people like Timbaland had been busy creating their own insane soundworlds at the close of the millennium, but when Girls Aloud and Sugababes came out with complex-yet-catchy singles ”“ and some remarkably great albums to boot ”“ which were as suitable for critics as they were for the charts, suddenly pure pop music got a new lease of life, and a whole new target market.Even more intriguingly, a glut of much-adored Swedish acts like The Knife, surprise chart sensation Robyn and Annie (whose long-awaited second album is finally seeing the light of day, as with Robyn’s, on her own label) have made some of the finest records of the decade, with barely a care for commercial impact. Likewise, Sally Shapiro is another aspiring pop princess unlikely to quite hit superstar status; the reclusive Shapiro refuses to play live or do interviews ”“ two massive black marks in the publicity-driven game of Pop. Still, this has given her time to put My Guilty Pleasure together, an immaculately produced sophomore album which has obviously been put together with more care and attention than your standard haphazard pop LP.After the breathtaking atmospheric instrumental opener 'Swimming Through the Blue Lagoon’, where Shaprio’s wordless vocals stutter over pulsing crystalline keyboards, the album immediately takes a downward turn. Both ‘Love in July’ and ‘Looking at the Stars’ cram too many tricks into their overlong running times, stuffed as they are with waves of ethereal synths, the ubiquitous octaves of that Goldfrapp bassline and choruses that are so detached, they apparently need to be in a totally different key from the rest of the track to make their presence felt.Fortunately, after a faltering start, My Guilty Pleasure regains its footing pretty quickly, with track after track of sleek ‘n’ sassy electro-disco; the Saint Etienne-referencing ‘Save Your Love’ is the obvious highlight, an impeccably-crafted pop gem which, in some other dimension, would be an instant floor-filler. Conversely, ‘Jackie Jackie’ is a hopeless anthem for a relationship gone wrong, with Sally’s processed spoken word vocals (“Why don’t normal people fall in love with me?” she wonders, “I don’t think I’m that strange. Do you think I’m strange?”) sounding strangely affecting in the wake of the song’s synthesized confusion, before a final key change lifts the track into the great top 10 in the sky. Meanwhile the enigmatic ‘My Fantasy’ is everything the Little Boots album should have been ”“ a two-chord barrage of house pianos and four-to-the-floor rhythms dusted off with Shapiro’s nonchalantly clipped Scandinavian purr.It’s this sense of detachment that makes the album an occasionally trying listen. The arrangements are watertight and the production is flawless, but Shapiro herself frequently sounds so ice-cold and downright bored, that the hooks (and there are plenty to go around) barely register. Shapiro’s MySpace asks “What if you just want to be a normal person with a normal job, record songs in the weekends, and spend the holidays picking blueberries instead of going on tour?” and, much like The Knife, it’s easy to respect her for wanting to work the popmachine this way. However, if this kind of isolation from the media and her fanbase is also keeping her personality away out of the records she makes, maybe it’s time to rethink her career strategy... 54%Sally Shapiro on Myspace