With her highlighted cowlick now collapsed into a pair of moody bangs, the cover shot of Imelda May’s new record signals “new direction” in monochrome semaphore. And her music has similarly changed – the rockabilly romps have been replaced by ruminative country soul ballads, channelling Candi Staton and Nancy Sinatra, and produced by T Bone Burnett. The songwriting is rock solid, and in an age of will-this-do toplines, her melodic touch should not be undervalued; take 6ixth Sense, which has a satisfying direction to its doo-wop tinged meandering. But despite the tonal left turn, she’s still driving in the middle of the road, with always-predictable shifts in cadence and chord. Authorial flourishes, like the Like a Hurricane-esque guitar solo on How Bad Can a Good Girl Be, are smoothed out and muted, and rhythmically, as on grunge-soul anthem Leave Me Lonely, she can be as stodgy as the album’s title. Still, there are earworms aplenty, whether they’re barnstorming singalongs or drowsy coos.
