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Album Reviews
Album Review: Sally Shapiro – My Guilty Pleasure (Permanent Vacation)
By CMU Editorial | Published on Monday 24 August 2009
Swedish chanteuse Sally Shapiro helped kick-start the renaissance of Italo Disco in 2007 with her critically lauded debut album ‘Disco Romance’, which has since been continued by the acts on the Italians Do It Better label, though Shapiro has much more in common with her fellow Scandinavian practitioners of the genre than that lot. Notoriously shy and reclusive (she never performs live), she’s an unlikely pop star but, compared with her debut, ‘My Guilty Pleasure’ has been released with vastly more publicity; such has been the attention from influential music websites such as Pitchfork. Those familiar with ‘Disco Romance’ will recognise the signature Sally Shapiro sound; feather-light vocals reciting tales of love and longing, backed by Johan Agebjorn’s brooding, melancholic synthesisers. Nothing much has changed for her second album; the template remains intact, but why change a successful formula? The first single, ‘Love In July’ begins with barely-there, mournful piano, before building into something almost from another planet entirely. ‘He Keeps Me Alive’, a track that’s been kicking around for some times and features extensive use of vocoder and ‘Looking At The Stars’, more epic in length than Sally’s usual three minute pop nuggets, are amongst other highlights of a very consistent album, as we’ve come to expect. There’s no reinventing of the wheel, no major attempts to try anything different just yet, but that might come in time. 2009 has already been the year of the meeting of synthesisers and female vocals. There’s not a world of difference musically between Sally Shapiro and Little Boots, say, but the latter can’t hold a candle to Shapiro. KW
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