Few Pop Idols have proven as divisive as Lily Allen down the years and, whether you view her as shameful, shameless or whatever else, rarely has the garrulous Londoner shut up or stood down when many have attempted to shut down her recurrently unpopular opinions. So it should make absolute sense for her to return with a record entitled No Shame; and from it, following on from Trigger Bang, come another two equivalently transpicuous numbers…
The first, Three, recalls her fuzzy cover of Keane’s Somewhere Only We Know as musically, a somewhat imprecise piano takes the lead, accompanied by bumbling lines of bass and, subsequently, Britpoppy guitar parts and more expressive percussive elements. Lyrically, it’s similarly facile, guileless stuff (“When things feel black and white/ We’ll do some colouring in,” she’ll repeatedly soothe), although there’s something that’s both comforting and complementary to it all, its simplicity offset by Allen’s impressive, quavering vocal.
The second, Higher, lets rather less of this natural aptitude shine through, Soleima-like Auto-Tune all but obfuscating the transparently human, and tremendously confessional tone to the above track. A rhetorical quizzing on the reasons as to why she feels “use[d] and abuse[d]” by a right “type,” and won’t allow it to continue, the below may be more contemporary in terms of its sound, but it somehow doesn’t quite suit Allen’s newfound lucidity of thought and word. Indeed, it is – both structurally and sonically – not too dissimilar to Trigger Bang, but lacks its witty quips and downright, well, banging chorus. So long as No Shame has another few of those, however, she ought to be alright… still.
No Shame is available from June 8th via Parlophone, while Lily Allen plays The Dome on March 21st.