Review Summary: Unimpressed Listener
Alan Ball’s superb series Six Feet Under aired on HBO from the early to mid-2000s, and won numerous accolades for its exceptional writing and pathos-rich drama. The series finale, ‘Everyone’s Waiting’, made use of Sia’s gentle ballad ‘Breathe Me’ for its closing moments, in which one of the main characters drives into the sunset and the fate of her family is made clear. This song, although simple, was enriched to near-transcendent levels by the context afforded by the scene in question, and this irrevocably cemented the mellow piano hook and poignant lyrics into the recesses of my addled student brain. Fast-forward to the year after I first finished the show, and who’s this illusive character all over the charts with showstoppers like ‘Chandelier’ and ‘Elastic Heart’? They were powerhouse pop anthems with genuine resonance, and although they didn’t grab me with the same level of emotional weight as ‘Breathe Me’, it was intriguing to see Sia’s development as an artist several years on from the show’s conclusion. Unfortunately, after all the billboard scaling and obvious artistic heart, it does appear that this development has hit something of a dead end. The lacklustre
This Is Acting, underwhelming collaboration with Diplo/ Labrinth
LSD, a bizarre Christmas album, and the soundtrack to the comically spectacular misfire
Music, are all indicative of an artist who is always confident in their vision, but can’t seem to critically assess whether it is even worth pursuing to its endpoint.
Reasonable Woman, although clearly the effort of someone with an uplifting vision (and a compelling vocal ability), is an overlong and bland collection of feature-heavy songs that doesn’t break much new ground for the singer, and carries over a wealth of issues that have plagued her most recent output. From a cursory glance, it would appear that Sia has created quite the robust collection of songs. Much like the rest of her recent work, it clocks in at just shy of 50 minutes and has a wealth of features, including Chaka Khan and Kylie Minogue. After digging into the actual content, however, it becomes transparent just how brittle and calcium-deficient the bones of this record actually are.
It starts off somewhat promisingly, as two of the album’s best moments sandwich the release like two just-in-date pieces of bread; ‘Little Wing’, and ‘Rock and Balloon’. The former has a bassy undercurrent and utilises an R&B vibe, seasoned liberally with wavy electronica. Although it’s more than a little reminiscent of ‘Unstoppable’, it showcases a great many of the artist’s strengths in addition to offering a neat rhythm base and soaring vocal performance. The closer is far more understated; a graceful and warping ballad with a consistently developing production style and pleasant vocal melodies. On both of these cuts there is a synchronicity between music and voice as they work in tandem to effectively convey the intended atmospherics. Lamentably, this is a rarity amongst the undercooked filler between these slices. The LP’s first power ballad, ‘If I Had A Heart’, is grotesque. A percussion-heavy plod with simple strings and electronic effects caked onto the melody- the earnest lyricism is the only aspect of the song that even vaguely lands. The vocal patterns fluctuate from downplayed simplicity in the verses to a see-sawing bridge, and then into repetitive chorus and back again. Sia unleashes her scratchy vocal screeches at the end of certain notes before lurching awkwardly into the next phrase, and admittedly the technique does add emphasis to her highs. The other side of the coin is that it feels toe-curling to experience and comes off as little more than an unnecessary irritant. Following track/ lead single ‘Gimme Love’ is similarly structured and retains the same threadbare songwriting, but works far more convincingly by allowing the vocal to flow organically between the song’s movements. The group backup is also tastefully applied, and the piece would be passable were it not for the ill-advised vocalising that punctuates the cut throughout, along with the underwhelming music itself.
Sia. Loves. Repetition. Not repetition for emphasis, or repetition as an aspect of the music gradually develops into something greater… her repetition is more in the vein of a four year old who just learned their first curse word. Incessant repetition of lyrics, melodies, vocal patterns...
Reasonable Woman is absolutely machine-gun-loaded. ‘Wanna Be Known’ and its mantra-like recitation of
this time I won’t run stands out as a particularly garish example, and when set against the brain-numbing mundanity of the song itself, the whole experience is akin to some pop-centric Ludovico technique. Light-hearted hip-hop number ‘Champion’ makes use of a recycled phrase for its chorus where the only change between relays is a slight tonal variation at the tail end of each. This really drags the piece down, as the features actually do their best with the sunny, exuberant beat and manage to produce something not unenjoyable, but the downward gear-shift to accommodate the boring chorus hurts the flow and vibe to no end. Even the more understated occurrences of repetition, such as those found on ‘Nowhere To Be’, are shoved to centre-stage by the uninteresting songwriting, which leaves the listener with little else to focus on aside from the vocal. The song itself has a rousing atmosphere, but the recurring tic of
get higher and the unnecessarily long child-whining-for-their-apple-juice note holds just further add to the overall flatness. ‘Go On’ serves as the nail in the coffin, and it would be comical if it weren’t so unforgiving in its brutality. The intensity of its central preoccupation as Sia declares
when you think it can’t go onnnnnnnnn… is uplifting and bold upon its first appearance. Upon the second, third, fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh etc. the message does start to spread itself more than a little thin. Such constant, imbecilic overuse of the same motifs is an obvious indicator of an underwritten song, and although there’s nothing quite so assaultive so as to be offensive, the instances are much too frequent for an artist as obviously committed to their craft as Sia. Even beyond the repetitiveness and focussing on the lyricism at large, it’s apparent that despite some occasional creativity and engaging battle-cry ferocity, it’s almost universally too overblown and silly to stir any genuine emotion. There may be big heart at its core, but the body it’s beating for is woefully malnourished.
Though there is some genre disparity to accommodate the features, these switchups are hardly to the overt detriment of the content on display. The main reason for this is that they hardly seem to affect Sia’s approach to writing in the least, and as such the album has this sense of being haunted by her subpar consistency even as the musical landscape contorts around her. Kylie feature ‘Dance Alone’ is a monotonous, electropop-inflected bop with a trudging melody, weak verses, and, aside from the mildly diverting bounce of its chorus, possesses absolutely no dynamism and makes zero usage of the pop princess it features. Paris Hilton, whose long-awaited second album is slated to be executive produced by Sia, features on later album cut ‘Fame Won’t Love You’, and it stands out as one of the LP’s stronger moments. Taking the form of a vocal-led bubblegum track with a lightly percolating hook and slightly muted beat, its nuanced disco-hook simplicity works wonders amongst a collection of unengaging stodge. As if on cue, though, a torch is almost immediately taken to this impression because of the cyclonic vocal melodies and awkwardly layered chorus that turn the whole production into just another missed opportunity. There’s a severe absence of forethought when it comes to assessing how the component pieces of the songs here interact and play off each other, with the aforementioned cut being especially guilty of this; instead of accentuating the subdued minimalism of the piece’s simplicity, the vocal weedles and roars over the top and drowns out any and everything else. Were this Sia in her heyday, penning hooks that could encourage a tear by the slightest suggestion of a key change, such a convergence of tone may have worked in her favour. Unfortunately, the clockwork mediocrity of the vocal lines throughout assure that the release is constantly being ground down under Sia’s own bootheel, despite her obvious effort to elevate it above the sum of its parts. All other elements of the album are for naught if the aspect burning bright in the limelight isn’t up to snuff, and even though there are moments where the melodies are substantiated by the vocal prowess or vice versa, these occasions are so fleeting that they scarcely register.
In many ways, this LP represents a medley of Sia’s last few releases- more specifically, all of the bad habits she has picked up along the way. It has the overblown, zesty tweeness of the
Music soundtrack. It has the heady, insipid dance headaches of
LSD. It has the compelling but ephemeral energy of
This Is Acting. Of these it has the most in common with the
Music example along with its filmic counterpart, in that it is clearly well-intentioned but so poorly executed that it’s difficult to glean any positive effect from the end product. Sia’s domination of the charts during the 2010s feels like a distant memory now, and although she seems to be experimenting with her sound without quite as much mainstream pressure, the songwriting rarely justifies such risks. Despite the strength of her vocal talent being undoubtedly enough to buoy up subpar musicality, the oddball lyricism and sleepy hooks keelhaul this aspect of her performance. The soul of the release, comprising the uplifting thematics and intended epicness succumb to a power vacuum created by the repetitive, uninspired songwriting, clipping the being's little wings before it's even able to walk properly. The strongest aspects of the album are contained to the simpler, more melodic cuts that draw attention to Sia as a vocal performer, but even these are handicapped by the weak hooks that wash out the formidable power of her voice. There’s nothing here that even echoes the powerful effect of tracks from her earlier work, and although there are occasional flashes of what made an album like
1000 Forms of Fear so memorable, these moments are neither frequent nor emphasised enough to give any sort of quality elevation to the songs where they turtlehead. The album is a frustrating, calculated mishmash of pop powerhouses, balladry and dance music, but are either underdeveloped, overdeveloped, or just plain bad.
