London
Urban Contemporary

Poor All Saints. When they first come onto the music scene, comparisons to Spice Girls are inevitable. But they are not at all like the Spice Girls, for All Saints’s brand of music tends more towards the laid-back, lounge cocktail sort of music. And in their follow-up to self-titled their debut, they try so hard to be cool that they lost the plot completely.

Saints & Sinners are filled with so many nondescript, drum-machine heavy, vocal-lite R&B/pseudo-jazzy tunes that I can’t help but to wonder if their target audience are late night singles bar or bored Hollywood celebrity parties where alcohol and illegal powders flow free. On the menu are throwaway tunes one listens to with only half a ear in overpriced hair salons and posh bistros.

The only bright moments are Pure Shores, a work of pure ethereal aural pornography, and the sound-alike Black Coffee which has one of the best choruses I’ve heard in a long time. Coming close is Natalie Appleton’s Dreams, a song about letting go of heartbreak that works.

Everything else is anesthesia territory.