The good the bad and the meh...

The good news is that Paloma Faith has released the cover art for her second album, Fall To Grace, and its completely stunning. If there were BRIT awards for best album covers, Paloma should win a lifetime achievement award ALREADY because this is her second mindblowingly beautiful piece of cover art in a row. Music-wise, we're not that excited, her first album was ok: a meld of the sort of anodynely burlesque stuff we'd expect Dita Von Teese to release if she got a record deal and the occasional heart-strings-tugger ("New York" mainly). It was kind of too glossy and in love with its own production style though. Lots to marvel at, not much to love.

We have a feeling this will be a similar affair, actually. Below is "Picking Up The Pieces", the debut single, and whilst, again, it's nice enough and theoretically totally up our street, we completely forgot it existed afterwards and didn't even make it all the way through before something on the internet distracted us. Sad but true. Maybe it'll do more for you, though.

Um...

Nice pink barnet...

Despite this, visually, being entirely 'up our street', and despite Paloma showing a keenness and willingness to join in with choreography that we can only admire (we hate it when popstars don't even try to join in, not mentioning any names Leona Lewis, Katy Perry etc.) MUSICALLY, this still disappoints us. We appreciate the 'retro vibe' (it's not half-arsed, it's actually fairly authentic sounding) and we appreciate Paloma's voice, but it's not... quite there yet.

Fortunately there's still her previous single "New York" a song of glittering and shimmering wonder and her album closer, "Play On" (well worth a 'look'), also musically enticing. But this? Not entirely satisfying.

Stunning P-Faith artwork: it continues...

The single's not going to rock your world, the video will probably be ornate and beautiful, the chart placing will be short of impressive, but there's ONE THING YOU CAN COUNT ON. Paloma Faith's artwork: always spectacular. 10/10. Brilliant. Well done, Paloma. Gold, gold star.

UPDATE:
Oh there's a video too.

A stunning Paloma Faith video...

What we think or feel about Paloma Faith is completely besides the point. It doesn't change the fact that her hair, in this spiffy (and expensive looking) video, goes beyond all previously documented boundaries of beautifulness and gingerness and into the realm of the spectacular.

Ms. Paloma Faith continues on her crusade to release stunning artwork for strangely average music...

Uh oh...

This is Paloma Faith's debut album cover and just from the styling... we may have to decide we like her. So it happens again.

A thing about Paloma Faith...

Paloma Faith should be right up our street... We've got a gingerish ex-burlesque dancer here who starred in St. Trinian's. That on its own should be enough to get us obsessed. It's the song, "Stone Cold Sober", really, that lets us down. Let us be clear: it's not 'bad'. But... it's unimaginative at the very least. Obviously it's going to be a hit.

We read someone say somewhere that they thought this looked like one of those one-off expensive videos that is everywhere all summer and then the artist is never heard from again.

We concur.