The cheap tinsel backing track to "I'll Hold My Breath" is reminiscent of Wham!'s "Last Christmas", while "Your Biggest Mistake" could be a Frankmusik cast-off.īut at its best Lights feels remarkably uncontrived, cantering across genres, following personal whims and visions rather than marketing agendas.
On the negative side, "The Writer" is a big bluster of a song, with a chorus where the spectre of the Cranberries' Dolores O'Riordan is all too vivid, whose future success could be Goulding's undoing. Lights is mostly produced by Frank's protégé Starsmith, and he does a largely good job, notably on the euphoric e-rush of "Starry Eyed" and "Under the Sheets", a grand, almost Björkian hyperballad. It's reminiscent of the suburban pop of the Sundays (if they'd had an electro makeover like their forbears Everything But the Girl)- the details of small lives and sitting room triumphs, the low horizons and "the carelessness of running away." "Wish I Stayed" is apparently the first song that Goulding emailed to Vincent Frank (aka Frankmusik, south London's bedroom pop auteur) as an acoustic songwriter. It's still the song that best captures the tensions of Lights, with Goulding singing of "skipping ropes, trampolines" and crafty schoolgirl smokes. "Guns and Horses" may be the best opening invitation for travel since "Two Divided by Zero" kicked off the Pet Shop Boys' Please: "Let's join forces, we've got our guns and horses." It builds from spare acoustics to urgent trance pop- "I left my house, left my clothes, door widen open, heaven knows, but you're so worth it, you are."- concluding with a desperate a cappella coda, and a brief breathless chuckle at her casual audacity. It's an album about leaving home, and it works best when the contrast between the folk singer and the pop production chimes with the tensions between the pull of home and the allure of the city. Outside of its immediate context, Lights is a sometimes great, always promising debut. Goulding would fit in perfectly alongside Lykke Li, Jenny Wilson, even Robyn. Maybe it's because ABBA started out in folk groups, but the Scandinavians seem more comfortable with the idea of a confessional pop that marries immediacy with intimacy. If she'd been born Else Goldsdottir, and hailed from Helsinki rather than Hereford, Goulding probably wouldn't have these problems.
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