Record Exchange Boise

Reviews:

For awhile there it looked like Natalie Imbruglia would fade away into one-hit-wondersville.The winsome “Torn”—meaty enough to be cool, melodic enough tobe a hit—made the Australian-born former soap opera star a hot newcomerand helped her sell more than six million copies of her 1997 debut Left ofthe Middle. And then—nothing, save for a cameo on the “Stigmata”film soundtrack. Chalk it up, she’s said, to follow-up nerves and post-successpartying and a few time-consuming romantic trysts. In other words, Imbruglia’sonly human, and the wounds from that humanity are all over her long-in-comingsophomore effort White Lilies Island. Named after her new home in Englandand co-written entirely by Imbruglia herself (“Torn” was the productof producer Phil Thornalley), the 12-track set is as tuneful a venting sessionas you’ll find, with Imbruglia and her collaborators making her angst aslistenable as it is dark. So while she muses about how success “Pickedme like a cherry… and it filled me with the craving” on “Hurricane.”Imbruglia does so with an arresting melody framed by acoustic guitar and lightpercussion. “Everything Goes” ponders isolation amidst a rolling,lush arrangement, while “Sunlight”—one of two songs added toa scrapped version of the album that was supposed to come out last fall—lamentslost opportunities while driving with the textured rock that’s palpablyrooted in U2. Tracks such as “That Day” and “Wrong Impression,”the album’s brightly poppy first single, have the same commercial heftas “Torn,” and “Satellite,” the album’s only directlove song, recalls early Joni Mitchell. Imbruglia may have felt like the “Beautyon the Fire” during much of the past five years, and on White LiliesIsland she emerges singed but still driven by plenty of creative heat.