Swing Out Sister, you might remember, emerged on the back of the ‘80s ersatz soul boom, Corinne Drewery’s warm tones contrasted by backing tracks as dry and airless as an eight hour plane trip, all designed by Paul Staveley O’ Duffy, a studio wiz whose other clients at the time included, in one of the great all time rock ‘n’ roll miscastings, Cry Before Dawn.
In the interim O’ Duffy evidently realised he wanted to be Burt Bacharach when he grew up. Accordingly, Where Our Love Grows suns itself by day on a yacht on the French Riviera and spends the night all dickied up and sipping G&Ts at Monte Carlo craps tables. You know the vibe: tuxes and evening gowns, highlife players and playboy mansions conjured up by heavenly choirs of strings, percussion and brass.
All of which would be a lot harder on the ear if not for Ms Drewery, a graduate of the Dionne Warwick school of effortless breath control and just-so phrasing who oozes the kind of class (but not perspiration) to which Sophie Ellis Bextor might aspire if she only had a better team of writers.
The best of these tunes (the title track and ‘Love Won’t Let You Down’) come bounding in the room dressed in Daz-white tennis togs, sweater tied just so around the shoulders, dripping Nelson Riddle. The only concession to any kind of modernism comes via the High Llamas school of Van Dykes Parks charts and Brian Wilson baroque pop, with oodles of xylophones and bell trees and sugar on top. Elsewhere, instrumentals like ‘Certain Shades Of Limelight’ and ‘Caipirinha’ alternate between Barbarella camp, male hairdresser backing vocals, Axelrod textures and the weird dopplering siren effect that cropped up every time Uma went ape in Kill Bill.
Where Our Love Grows is an immaculate pastiche, five star hotel elevator music. Not to this listener’s taste, but perfect for the newly moneyed of South Co. Dublin to blast from their convertibles when the rain stops hissing down.