It’s something wrong with me, most likely. There’s nothing specifically hateful about Dido’s voice. I just don’t feel any emotional connection with it at all. If you like its aggressive timidity, you’re in luck. There’s plenty here, level and featureless as a really good pavement; Ronseal pop, recorded on the sofa, a weak cup of tea within reach. There have probably been worse songs. The mildly affecting ballad Some Kind of Love would be charming by Saint Etienne, for example, but in Dido’s chill grasp it always feels like a performance, serenely unaffected by feeling. Pop music should be stolen pages from a head-spun diary; this is someone remembering the poem they wrote about a hedge.
Still, Dido’s brother – Faithless mastermind Rollo Armstrong – does a solid job with the production. Take You Home’s polite, shuffling beat is very track six, disc two of a 90s chilled house compilation. Yet all Rollo’s ingenious tricks can’t compensate for his sister’s inert contribution. Chances begins “All I did today was wake up and watch TV” then somehow becomes even less interesting than that already maddeningly bland revelation. More boring and pointless than Brexit.
