They’re best known for soundtracking a car advert with “Don’t Upset The Rhythm” - a song so preposterously catchy it’ll be stuck in your head by the end of this sentence - so you could be forgiven for trying to write the Noisettes off as a one-hit wonder. However Contact is in fact the third album from the London duo, and it surprises with its depth and sophistication.
The strengths of the duo - Brit School graduates Dan Smith and Shingai Shoniwa - are well-established: think upbeat, bass-heavy dance pop with energetic vocals, as if Shoniwa was channelling the most pepped-up of gym instructors. It’s no surprise to see the formula replicated on storming first-half tracks like “I Want You Back” and first single “Winner” - but, majestically produced as they are, they’re not what’s really exciting about Contact.
An over-dramatic orchestral opening aside, the solitary piano that signals the start of “Travelling Light” is the first sign that the album is not what it seems. Cast in the role of a silver-tongued 1950s lounge singer - at least, until the glossy studio tricks creep in - Shoniwa is magnificent, showing off a surprising if not entirely unexpected versatility to her vocals. Elsewhere she is cast as soul diva (“That Girl”); country starlet (“Ragtop Car”); power balladeer (“Never Enough”). With its tribal beats mixed in with electronic underpinnings “Love Power” sounds like a more polished tUnE-yArDs and, were it set to piano and ironed out a bit, the lungs belting out “Free” could almost belong to Adele.
There is of course that old saying about being a jack of all trades, and depending on the listener’s mood the never-ending genre bending could easily begin to grate. The experiments don’t have quite the same staying power as those big pop choruses and there are plenty of moments of pure cheese - the sounds of actual airline calls on “Final Call” chief among those - but it’s hard to hold them to too exacting a standard in the face of the sheer sense of fun that permeates the album as a whole. “The butterfly is out of her cocoon,” Shoniwa croons - and you can’t escape the impression that there’s no putting her back.
Take a listen to "Winner" below
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