Review: Life for Rent

Life for Rent, Dido (2003)

Music can trigger memories. You can be anywhere, at any time, and when that song or artist plays, you're suddenly thrown back to a happier (or sadder) time. When I sit here and review Life for Rent by Dido, I am called back to trips across the penines in our Toyota, the cold and the wind battering the sides and misting the windows. But here, I have to be critical.
      Luckily for me and my memories, Dido's album is a wonderful set of tracks that are a joy to listen to in all moods. Her USP is perhaps her light, almost silky vocal quality, and the way she conveys emotion is especially skillful. Making use of a range of instruments, her lyrics are powerful but still light enough for a casual listening. The singles that shine the most on this album are the now-famous White Flag, the titular song, and Sand in My Shoes.
    Seeing as this is Dido's second album, I'm sure you'd expect me to comment on how it compares to the first. No such luck, I'm afraid. Not only haven't I listened to that album, it's simply that this is the album that I feel the most connection with - the one most rooted in memory, and the one I'm using as a gauge for all of Dido's work on the whole. And here we come to the main critisism of Dido's work... her voice never varies from song to song. No experimentation. No difference in key, or genre, or anything. If any two of the none-shining songs were played in a supermarket, I would recognise the artist but not know the difference between the two. It would help as well if she managed somewhere along the line to sing about something other than relationships.
     To summarise, Dido is a great vocal artist in her own right - emoteful, light, and very good at getting across what she wanrts to say. However, her songs need some variation, and if she can experiment with different genres, then she would cease being a great artist and become an excellent one.

Thanks.