She's done so many glossy photo shoots, it's easy to forget that Sharleen Spiteri is actually one of Britain's greatest white soul singers. All the more frustrating then, that the anodyne pop songs produced by her backing band Texas so often fail to do it justice. Like most of their albums, Red Book isn't bad - it's just that it's all too obviously divided into a few potential singles and a large chunk of filler. To be fair, the production is as glossy as you'd expect and there's a couple of Motown pastiches that can't fail to get the hips swaying. But at no stage does Spiteri or anyone else sound genuinely excited or even vaguely animated about what they're doing - and the feeling is infectious. A record that's far too complacent for its own good.
