Album #11 : Sia - We Are Born

Sia

We Are Born (2010)

Sia Furler is one of Australia's most in-demand and highly regarded songwriters. It's fair to say that most people will have heard her work in the last ten or twelve years, but never known that it was her work. That's because Sia (as she is professionally known) is a bit of a songwriter-for-hire who has worked with some of popular music's biggest stars.

She has also released five albums of her own in sixteen years. By anyone's standards this is hardly a prolific rate, but considering most of her time is spent penning pop tunes for others it's not surprising. It is also the work rate of an artist who, by her own admission, hates the trappings of pop star fame and the obligatory shit-filled swimming pool that is the album release/promotion/performance process.

For most of her solo career Sia has produced moody, introspective songs. However, with 2008's Some People Have Real Problems, she began to find her own pop muse. This continued with 2010's We Are Born, which we take a look at today, not just to hopefully stop doing modern pop for January (two albums is more than enough) but because I don't want the LOAD Project to be 100% dude music.

The Album

This should be a nice, short review, because We Are Born is basically wall-to-wall discopop. The first four songs (The Fight, Clap Your Hands, Stop Trying and You've Changed) are all slices of catchy, hook-laden pop with disco flavours. The highlight is probably You've Changed , its guitar riff and lush backing vocals making it sound like ELO's disco adventures of the late 70s and early 80s (it would not be out of place on ELO's two 'disco' albums Discovery or Xanadu). Be Good To Me is the first non-discopop song, and owes more to 60s soul and R&B. A slower tempo swing beat and a seemingly conscious decision to put Sia front and centre of the mix makes this song different to what preceded it; consequently, it really stands out. It also is the first time we really get to see what Sia is capable of as a singer, and the answer is many, many good things.

We then return to dancepop with the next three songs, Bring Night, Hurting Me Now and Never Gonna Leave Me. More hooks and catchy choruses inside songs you can dance to. Unfortunately they're a bit forgettable, except for Bring Night which has maybe the catchiest chorus on the whole album. Cloud is more of a melancholy pop song; a great vocal from Sia is the main highlight, but the instrumentation (very understated and gentle keyboard chords) adds to the feeling of melancholia. It's great songcrafting even though the song itself is merely okay.

I'm In Here represents the 'old' Sia sound - it's a piano ballad tinged with desperation, resignation and sadness all at once. Written when Sia thought she was suffering mental problems, you can practically sense the cries for help emanating from the lyrics. Musically, the piano and Sia's vocals create the mood of the song perfectly. It is both beautiful and poignant, and again shows that while Sia is a great writer of pop songs, it's perhaps her non-pop moments that carry the most musical weight.

The Co-Dependent and Big Girl Little Girl are both fairly bland, inoffensive pop tracks that do little to grab your attention. Nothing more will be said because nothing more can be said. The final track, Oh Father, is a cover of the Madonna original that appeared on her seminal pop album, Like A Prayer (which I am going to be reviewing in February, funnily enough). While it's a perfectly serviceable cover, it lacks the emotional punch of the original, which is understandable given it was such a personal song for Madonna. It does go to show that a great song is a great song, no matter who does it, because this still sounds like a great pop ballad. 

The Verdict

We Are Born is a really dancey disco-pop record, written by an incredibly talented pop songwriter. It is undeniable that Sia knows her way around a pop hook; it is also very easy to see why so many artists want to work with her to write pop songs for themselves. She understands that the hook of the song is vital, and that it's best kept to the chorus, so that the hook is repeated a few times and sticks in the head long after the song is over. Sia knows her craft and is bloody good at it.

She is also a very good singer in her own right, though, and this album proves it. For mine, though, the best moments of the album are the non-pop moments. It's there where Sia bares her vulnerabilities and her emotions, and shows us that she can be storyteller as well as pop songstress, songbird as well as songwriter.

Give me an album like this over Lorde any day of the week. At least this album is fun and not full of its own self-importance.

My rating: ***

Standout Tracks

You've Changed

Be Good To Me

I'm In Here

Tomorrow, the first of three albums that each defined the band who wrote and performed them. I'm pretty excited about the week coming up, actually; there's some seriously wide musical ground that's going to be covered.