There’s been something rather troubling about Sophie Ellis-Bextor’s career over the past few years. Despite containing a number of decent tracks, her last release (2011’s Make A Scene) failed to flow as a coherent album and felt like a messy assortment of songs that had randomly been brought together. Three years on, and having successfully renewed public interest after a stint on Strictly Come Dancing, Sophie’s musical direction has changed pretty drastically. Wanderlust drops the disco beats and electropop in favour of a sound inspired by (amongst other things) Russian folk music, and it’s a very welcome change of direction. Having first come to prominence as the lead singer of Britpop band Theaudience, she’s no stranger to reinventing herself, but here the changes sound very natural and organic (even if some fans may end up feeling a bit alienated).
Lead single Young Blood is probably one of the most conventional tracks on the album, and despite limited production it has a charming sense of heartfelt simplicity to it, displaying her surprisingly impressive vocals in a way a lot of previous material has never quite managed. Yet for every moment on this album that feels understated and pretty, there are brilliantly absurd songs like 13 Little Dolls and Love Is A Camera. The former is perhaps the closest Wanderlust comes to sounding like something she could have recorded ten years ago (were she not singing about Russian folklore), whilst the lyrics play a vital role on the latter as it tells the story of an elderly woman who kills people by taking their pictures. It feels like on any other album by any other artist it wouldn’t have worked, and it’s undoubtedly bizarre, but it also shines as one of the album’s best tracks. Sophie’s always had fascinatingly odd lyrics in some of her work, and Wanderlust finally allows everything else to match.
Things do become a little tiring towards the end – closing track When The Storm Has Blown Over is rather forgettable when compared to something as dramatic as Birth Of An Empire, meaning that it was probably a wise decision to make this a relatively short ten-track album. On the whole, however, it’s quite the triumph, and could eventually stand to be one of the most important records of her career. We can only hope that Sophie will resist the temptation to play it safe and continue to branch out her sound and horizons, and we can’t wait to see what she’s got in store.
