Travelling By The Light

Well, well, well. VV Brown. With a name like that, how could a poor boy turn this album down, conjuring as it does tantalising visions of sideshow dancers after dark when the youngens are dispatched and for an extra few smackers you get to part forbidden tent flaps and see the queen at work in the boom-boom room. Vivacious VV! Vroom-vroom VV. Vava-voom VV!
And praise be, the reality is just as good as the fantasia, for Travelling By The Light is a red-hot pop burlesque (barely a tune over three-minutes-plus) that makes Britney’s circus look like a lame dog karaoke show (and I like Britney).
Weird thing though: no matter how multicoloured and ultra-moderne Miss Brown’s plumage (combed-back flattop roll with flowing tresses, if you must know), she always lets the roots show through. We know that post-Amy, the little girls once again understand broken-hearted and martyred and runny mascara’d Ronnie-centric torch song trilogies. Brown can do this with ease (‘Back In Time’ employs that old two on the floor/one on the snare figure), but she also hangs her songs around rudimentary soul structures (‘Shark In The Water’), cute shoo-be-doo-wop (‘Leave’, ‘Crazy Amazing’) and rockabilly shuffles (‘L.O.V.E.’), and slathers the whole confection in eye-popping daubs of Pop Art production.
So yes, Travelling, true to its title, whizzes by at the speed of an Ellroy novel. ‘Quick Fix’ sashays onto the catwalk (Miss Brown’s a working model) propelled by a mother of a backbeat and ‘Peter Gunn’ riff, topped off with the kind of attitude Girls Aloud would pawn their footballer boyfriends for. ‘Game Over’ is a demand for r.e.s.p.e.c.t that makes judicious use of 70s soul samples and neo-flamenco handclaps. ‘Bottles’ flaunts twangy guitar and John Barry-like strings. ‘Crying Blood’ counterpoints hardcore Catholic imagery with a track that sounds like Lulu doing the Monster Mash.
Travelling By The Light is pure pop album of the year. Imagine a London-Caribbean queen playing Gameboy in the Brill Building. Now that’s what I call music.

Key track: ‘Bottles’