Lights

Within the past year, the British music industry has been subject to an influx of strong female artists, with acts such as Lady GaGa, Florence + The Machine and Little Boots receiving much commercial and critical acclaim. Enter 2010 and cue Ellie Goulding, folktronica singer-songwriter and latest addition to this mainstream pop sisterhood. Winner of not only the Critics’ Choice award at the Brits this year, but also the BBC Sound of 2010, Goulding has faced an intense degree of hype and expectation in the course of the last few months. It is this pressure that raises the bar for debut album Lights.

Produced primarily by British electro-pop producer Starsmith, Lights conforms to the current trend of synth-pop for the most part, concurrently layering Goulding’s quirky vocals whilst creating relentlessly catchy hooks and melodies. Opening track ‘Guns and Horses’ manages to successfully balance the fusion of electronic and acoustics, providing Lights with a momentum that you would expect carries the rest of the album. This, however, is not the case. Whilst playing the record through, you can’t help but feel that Goulding gets lost beneath the intense production, the heavy synths, the thumping electronic beats. Current single ‘Starry Eyed’ is without a doubt a catchy, radio-friendly track, yet the true folk aspects that adorned the start of Goulding’s career are nowhere to be seen.

This being said, and if we take the record for what it is, Lights is still a generally pleasing collection of electro-pop creations. First release ‘Under the Sheets’ catches your attention from the onset, with its commanding drumbeats and warped auto-tuned vocal. It is ‘Wish I Stayed’, a track written entirely by Goulding and produced by patron Frankmusik, where the lyrics shine brightly amidst the combination of synthesisers and electro-pop twists. Assisted by Brit producer Fraser T. Smith (think Pixie Lott’s ‘Boys & Girls’) on creation ‘Your Biggest Mistake’, Goulding proves she has the potential to form gems of gleaming pop perfection. The record ends with ‘Salt Skin’, a clever, low-key cool-down to an album that is so fervently injected with electro-life and auto-tuned animation.

Lights is a conscious effort on Goulding’s half to abide by this current genre phenomenon. It is this shift of focus, however, that has completely engulfed the folk-acoustics that made her earlier demos so interesting and original. Goulding’s attempts provide her with a seat amongst the current clique of strong female artists, yet Lights is by no means a challenge to disrupt the innovation or longevity of our current female, mainstream heavyweights.