Well that's a shame. Little Mix were likable, talented winners of The X Factor – four times Everygirl in clashing neon, funky, funny, vulnerable but self aware. They proved repeatedly on the show that they could sing and then some, and even though they were a thrown-together group harmonised like they were sisters. Their most memorable turn, doing En Vogue's “Don't Let Go”, perfectly caught the beginning of the current wave of nostalgia for the great 1990s R&B girl groups, and when they won it felt like they could be an actual characterful pop band in the way the Sugababes and Girls Aloud were and, say, The Saturdays could never quite be.
Their first single proper, after the standard winners' Christmas number one, was/is great too – but rather ominously, “Wings” kicks this album off, as if to shout out that they don't have anything else as attention-grabbing. And they don't. There are some good bits, and some small attempts to keep the rough human edges that made LM so charming as they ascended The X Factor greasy pole, but really it's mostly a hodgepodge of committee design, migraine production and the kind of worthy whineyness we'll never escape post Emeli Sandé.
The 90s R&B references are ladled on – a De La Soul psuedo-cover in "How Ya' Doin", a guest spot from TLC's T Boz on the admittedly crunchy "Red Planet" – but really it's shrill, autotunemungous 2010s mall-pop through and through, with obligatory crashing dubstep flourishes and all the character produced and focus-grouped to within an inch of its life, then focus-grouped some more. A lost opportunity.
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