Schizophonic

HOW MUCH should we read into the fact that four of the tracks on Schizophonic, including the first two, contain the word "me" in their titles?

Not much, as it turns out. Instead of the narcissistic, self-obsessed, two-dimensional sonic atrocity most people were expecting, Geri Halliwell and her small army of studio helpers have confounded expectations by assembling a listenable, well-crafted, surprisingly likeable pop record. Which is something that Robbie Williams, for instance, has yet to manage.

Clocking in at a refreshingly brief 41 minutes, Schizophonic could easily pass for a more-restrained-than-usual Spice Girls record with Geri doing all the lead vocals. All the specified ingredients are present and correct from the off. Windswept emotional ballad (‘Walkaway’) – check. Big, brassy, musical vaudeville number (‘Look At Me’) – check. Effervescent glitterball disco anthem (‘Bag It Up’) – check. Straightforward 4/4 pop efforts (‘Lift Me Up’, ‘You’re In A Bubble’, ‘Sometime’) – check, check, check.

Halliwell’s voice, although not likely to give Chrissie Hynde any sleepless nights, is strong enough to carry the songs. She doesn’t have much emotional range – her singing tends to oscillate between one stereotype (tender, soft-voiced delivery of the ballads) and another (a "sassy vamp" type character) – but her performances do give the lie to those critics who suspected that her vocal work with the Spice Girls owed more to the powers of DAT technology than anything else.

Where Schizophonic comes a cropper is when it overreaches itself in its eagerness to show off its versatility ("I’m a drama queen if that’s your thing, baby/I can even do reality"). Some of the lyrics are downright clunky in the way they state the obvious with crushing overstatement: ‘You’re In A Bubble’ wins the prize for its trite observations on the fame game ("The more you get the more you chase/Wipe that Prada smile from your Rada face").

Equally, on the musical side of things, there’s an evident tendency to try to cover all bases even when such a task is patently beyond her abilities, such as the clumsy attempts at singing Hindi on ‘Let Me Love You’ or the cod-Latinisms on ‘Mi Chico Latino’, a dreadful pastiche of Madonna’s ‘La Isla Bonita’.

Yet, for all its faults, Schizophonic is a more impressive record than I, for one, had anticipated. If Schizophonic is part of an overall long-term campaign to sell her as the female George Michael (and it is), it’s an effective opening gambit.