Is Lucy Rose Turning Into Foxes?

My immediate response to Lucy Rose’s ‘Work It Out’ is that it is a somewhat unremarkable, light, airy and far too poppy album, with a few small touches to make parts of it stand out.

Lucy Rose’s voice is pretty enough to carry things through but there’s not much to really grab my attention here. I loved this girl when I saw her play the small ‘Sunday soother’ stage at Leopallooza festival, all folksy, rootsy stuff which sounded pure, honest and heart-felt. And I loved her even more the times I saw her guest vocalising on stage with Bombay Bicycle Club, her gawky ‘what am I doing here?’ stage presence and that beautiful voice in sweet conjunction with Jack’s quivering and quavering.

Lucy Rose seems to have grown up an awful lot since then and found her own style more, albeit heavily influenced by Bombay Bicycle Club, a couple of the tracks even sound as if they were collaborative efforts. In particular “Our Eyes” and “Koln” have that very distinctive BBC sound.

The new grown up second album version Lucy Rose is altogether a much more polished affair, and totally geared towards commercial success. Which is great. And there are still occasional memorable moments that remind me of why I stood spellbound in a field in Cornwall in the rain when everyone else had run for cover - the opening bars of “My Life” being one of those moments, before sadly going off along the pop ballad route.

A couple more of the ensuing songs seem to be heading towards the click ‘If you like Foxes you’ll love this’ recommendation button on Amazon. “Till the End” is almost guaranteed to become the soundtrack to some dire summer rom-com.

Then there’s the one where it all goes a bit electronic again, I think a couple of listens might improve “Cover up” but I just can’t help thinking how far removed it is from the Lucy Rose of three or four years ago. Change is good and this is bound to be a successful album but it’s just not hitting that spot for me.

The ones that are doing it for me are the ones that sound like they were written for the ‘Flaws’ album and luckily there are enough of those to keep me engaged. Album finisher “Into the Wild” is another one and I end this review feeling that I’ve been a bit on the harsh side here. This song is actually a treasure and I could listen to this one again and again.

Lucy Rose...if you ever look at this, please stay being you, and don’t become too Foxes.

To learn more about Lucy Rose, click here.

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Words by Mary Long.

COMMENTS

• Daniel Sado
  Heard really good things about Foxes... but check her out!