Demos

Miri - Canvas

Owain Paciuszko 02/06/2009

Rating: 3/5

Miri is an artist with a sound firmly routed in pop and opener Invitation has many of the signature marks of a lot of contemporary, successful chart-friendly female solo-artists. There's brightly strummed acoustic guitars, twinkling atmospherics and a light, happy drumbeat, all accompanied by Miri singing 'It's so nice to be here, let's stay a little longer.' It's bright, breezy, disposable, but quite nice in a soundtrack to a Richard Curtis-movie kind of way.

Elsewhere there's the distinctly unbitter sounding Bitter Romantic, some interesting 90s Bowie sounding synth-work on Colours and the moody piano-led track Lighthouse has the flavour of ex-Sneaker Pimps Kelli Ali's solo project Tigermouth. The album closes with the balladry of Plastic Faith which has the soulful pop feel of Gabrielle, but lacking a chorus as memorable as Dreams or Out Of Reach.

This is a rather standard pop record from Miri, filled with pleasant if forgettable tunes that are well produced but never particularly catchy or original. Miri has a fine voice and at times across the record gets a chance to show off, but for the most part its relegated to singing simple chart-friendly pop.