Dido's been on the receiving end of a lot of flak since her watery pop ruminations first found their way to the airwaves almost a decade ago, but not without good reason. The former Faithless collaborator's music has become a by-word for 'bland' - and if it wasn't for Eminem's canny sampling endeavours, things could have turned out very differently for the extravagantly-named one.
To that effect, the appointment of Jon Brion on production services for her third album was a wise move; the talented Brion has worked magic on the albums of numerous artists from Rufus Wainwright to Kanye West - so a glimmer of hope was cast that he might haul Dido's (admittedly, multi-million-selling) career from the pit of self-cultivated anguish it's festered in for the last decade. No such luck: Safe Trip Home is possibly her most innocuous offering yet, the musical equivalent of a home so child-proofed and devoid of edges that it may as well be made of marshmallow.
Range has always been a problem for the 36-year-old singer, in that she has none. Even though much of the lyrical content deals with emotional turmoil - particularly the death of her father in recent years - the soundtrack is simply so anaemic and devoid of drama that the lyrics carry no weight, and she may as well be babbling nursery rhymes. These are either lithe, folky drifts of song (the aptly-named Quiet Times), or utterly prosaic, languid, lazy arrangements of strings and acoustic guitar (The Day Before the Day). Even the few exceptions - closer Northern Skies and the vaguely restless Let's Do the Things We Normally Do - aren't anywhere near contrary enough to be deemed a diversion, and even collaborations with the omnipresent Brian Eno (doesn't he have a home to go to?) and Roots drummer ?uestlove fail to ignite these vaporous strains.
This sort of dinner-party-soundtrack apathy masquerading as music inspired a generation of youths to form the punk movement. If this stultifyingly dull album doesn't serve a similar purpose, then we're simply all irrevocably doomed.
