Ghosts - Siobhán Donaghy

I read a review that said that this young lady was the most underrated artist with a recording contract in the UK.

I knew who she was: founding member of the pop group Sugababes, she left for a solo career, which quickly failed and vanished.

Apparently, not completely. And thankfully some people at Parlophone still think she should continue recording. Thanks to those people she released a true pearl of an album.

Starting with Don't Give It Up, a hymn to perseverance, it slowly floats down to more softly sounded balads of break ups and love. One of the highlights of the album marks the middle ground: with 12 Bar Acid Blues she, very tongue-in-cheek, remembers a disastrous trip, where everything actually happens, while thinking that she "should have heeded" her father's advice.

From here we continue down into darker terrain. And the last songs of the album give the ethereal feeling you should get from an album named Ghosts. Of special note are the last 3 songs: Medevac, Halcyon Days and the fabulous Ghosts.

A final mention has to go to the production team of James Sanger (production geek that I am) who did a spectacular job of giving a proper backtrack to Siobhán's voice and lyrics.

For more information go to her site.

"In search of..." by NERD

I bought this album on sale in Basel.

Released in 2002, when the production team The Neptunes was still the best kept secret in the business and NERD was just another re-incarnation of the same people.

Not yet commercial and ever-present in our MTV, Pharrel Williams and Chad Hugo, managed to put out a true hip-hop album: brilliant melodies and incisive lyrics, it either shows you the harsher side of society (guns, crime, corruption, politics, prostitution and drugs) while interspersed there are hints that "things are getting better" and that someday you might even "raise a little family and be a voter".

Delicious album, from beginning to end. Want to mellow? To dance? To think? This is the album for it.