Melanie C
The Sea

Melanie Jayne Chisholm aka Sporty Spice; a rather singular choice for the highly anticipated (?) return to these shores of your favorite independent musical opinion maker. Well, you more or less know me and know that I like to surprise but above all to surprise myself, this and also my natural preference for the "underdogs", for those somewhat atypical characters, not immediately definable and often far from great media attention. Given my now established dimension as a declared and happy poppet, a character like Melanie C represents a natural source of interest and also a precious resource for that niche of modern pop, balanced, strictly unpretentious but with the right touch of style and elegance. Well, the former Spice Girl is a woman who knows her stuff, that beautiful and powerful "I Turn To You", her successful and fine debut single from 1999 was no accident; our Melanie is the only fugitive from the hated/loved girl band who decided to be a singer when she grew up. Yet the solo consecration, the great success she deserved, never arrived. Too many records and too few tabloid stories. Not vamp enough. Too much humility, perhaps, and a background that weighs like a stone. Yet Melanie believes in it and shows that she can stand there, and stand there well, doing her "job" with grace, style, and dignity, even if the general public never believed in her.

This 2011 album is undoubtedly the best, to date, of her post-Spice career. Even the title, "The Sea", simple and elegant, is definitely well-chosen and appropriate for what these eleven songs have to offer. A homogeneous, balanced, and well-sorted collection, reflecting the image of a mature singer well immersed in her dimension, expressing her personality instead of hurrying to chase some grotesque bandwagon of the moment. Fresh from the one-off (thankfully) reunion with her former adventure companions, which received more indifference and chuckles than commercial success, Melanie C dives, metaphorically and not, into the "The Sea" project, to "wash away" the remnants of that lucrative but objectively embarrassing experience and consequently return to doing what she does best, that is, being herself. And so she abandons the modest pop-rock aspirations of her previous releases and embraces a sound more centered on electronics. Many midtempos characterized by smooth and moderately imposing arrangements, with some subtle new-age aspirations, interspersed with a few ballads and incursions into good dance-rock. "The Sea" is certainly a well-born album, easy and pleasant to listen to, with inspired melodies and a certainly somewhat underpowered but pleasant and never overpowering vocality. Its greatest strength is undoubtedly the perfect structure, the well-defined and codified context that allows the songs to emerge simultaneously and naturally, without peaks and troughs, and above all free from mortal sins such as pseudo-sophisticated affectations, gratuitous trashiness for the use and consumption of horny teenagers or, even worse, depressing indie(!?) turns that only God knows what they mean.

Among the happiest episodes, one can certainly cite the atmospheric, sinuous, and powerful title track "The Sea", a small electronic-orchestral masterpiece with Celtic inflections, a truly well-chosen and impactful opening, but also the lively dance-rock à la P!nk of "Think About It", and especially an intense and whirling "Stupid Game", performed with the right amount of grit and conviction. The delightful semi-acoustic ballad "One By One", with a velvety sweetness that almost makes me think of the splendid Kirsty MacColl as a model of inspiration; "All About You" with its theatrical and pathos-laden progression, highlights one of the greatest merits and salient characteristics of "The Sea": Mel C's flexible but substantially subtle vocality adapts very well to a very charged musical context, full of well-defined rhythms, powerful orchestrations, and relatively simple but very scenic electronics. There is a pleasant contrast among the components at play, a perfectly balanced chemistry that never breaks, uniting all episodes of the album until reaching the retro suggestions of a smoky and fascinating "Get Out Of Here"; the solidity and clear ideas in terms of sound and atmospheres finally allow for an ambitious closure like "Enemy", eight minutes of great intensity that sound like the ideal end of the circle, ideally connecting back to the opener "The Sea"; the atmospheres are similar but instead of a homogeneous and constant electronic flow, we find an orchestral triumph that ideally follows the tide's trend, a harmonious alternation of light and shadow that seals in the best way the accomplished metamorphosis of this friendly and eager pop star. From Sporty Spice to Melanie C, from a supporting role in a quirky yet charming commercial gimmick to a credible protagonist of her story, all without hypocritical turnarounds and false pretentiousness; always Sporty at heart, without masks.

Listening to "The Sea" without knowing Melanie Chisholm and her past, one could think of anything but the record of any runaway from a girl band. Besides her flagship "I Turn To You", a much-used archetype revisited in this fine album, I think especially of pieces like "Circles In The Sand" or "La Luna" by Belinda Carlisle, or the solo works of Maggie Reilly in the early '90s as models of inspiration, with which she shares natural refinement and a subtle exotic touch; an album of which Melanie C can rightfully be proud, and which I feel strongly inclined to recommend heartily and without reservation.