Sophie Ellis Bextor has a voice of rare richness. Tellingly, however, her imperious and glacial vocals are by far the most distinctive thing about Trip The Light Fantastic. It’s notable that the single, ‘Catch Me’, all rampaging glitter-ball beats, is one of the finest moments on the record. It is also, coincidentally of course, one of the few tracks with no songwriting input by Ellis-Bextor.
Elsewhere the cheese factor reaches hardcore fondue levels. ‘If You Go’ and ‘China Heart’, all Euro-trash bleeps and samba drums, are particularly inconsequential. The bland balladry of ‘The Distance Between Us’ and ‘What Have We Started’ isn’t much more endearing. There are moments of redemption. There is a wonderfully quirkiness to ‘Only One’, while ‘New York City Lights’, with its splendid collage of percussion and keys, summons a sense of metropolitan vigour. It’s followed by the album’s stand-out track, ‘If I Can’t Dance’, a flirtatious little number that positively demands you cut some rug.
Three albums into her career and it seems to be a case of diminishing returns for Ellis-Bextor. Yet again too much of the material on offer has sold her short. With her deadpan cool, wonderfully mannered delivery and subversive themes, she should be burning the goddamn house right down, every time. However, with Trip The Light Fantastic the ice maiden too often fails to get us hot under the collar.