Roísín Murphy casts a wide net: Avant-pop aesthetes fell for Moloko's screwball trip-hop; Ibizan disco bunnies made "Sing It Back" a pop anthem; nightcrawlers found a postergirl in the booze-hound sleeve of Statues; style-mag fantasists never tire of her covers. Even Sky Sports succumbed, making "The Time Is Now" the unofficial anthem of 21st century soccer.
So why isn't she a huge star? It's a question that has likely been taxing the minds of EMI, who, to their credit, have taken a punt on Murphy after her 2005 solo debut tanked. Recorded with tech-jazz savant Matthew Herbert, Ruby Blue was a brilliantly inventive collection of cut-up pop that confounded her label and failed to find an audience. According to her new bosses, Murphy has got all that self-indulgence out of her system, and is now stepping up to the plate to make a "career record." She has the potential, they claim, to be a kind of beloved entertainer on the level of another investment of theirs, Robbie Williams.
In truth, Murphy is closer in spirit to the late Associates singer Billy Mackenzie, another maverick celtic diva torn between the arthouse, the punk club, and the disco. Mackenzie could never quite knuckle down to the career frequently promised him; one suspects Murphy won't fare any better. Her position is perfectly illustrated in Scott King's artwork for the album and singles, setting Murphy on the streets of east London, having evidently just beamed down from the planet Gaultier-- a pop peacock out of place and time in the mundane Kate Nash-ville of British pop 2007.
The record itself finds Murphy on her best behaviour, however-- wearing its natural wildness and eccentricity lightly, Overpowered is focused solely on the dancefloor. Her collaborators, from Bugz in the Attic and Groove Armada, have constructed a gleaming shrine to the spirit of Bobby O and Giorgio Moroder: The lead single and title track borrows a primordial bassline squelch from the dawn of cosmic disco-- La Bionda's "I Wanna Be Your Lover"-- and the follow-up, "Let Me Know", shamelessly plunders the chorus of Tracy Weber's 1981 classic "Sure Shot".
Murphy is the singer that the mid-00s British nu-pop of Richard X and Xenomania has so dearly missed: A dramatic yet unshowy singer, versatile enough to take in the regal hauteur of "Primitive", the cerebral chill of "Dear Miami", the randy glee of "Footprints", the chutzpah and grace of "You Know Me Better". She's funny, clever, heartbreaking, and strident, the kind of disco singer Dusty Springfield never quite had the abandon to become. At times, however, she's almost too willing to play it straight. "Movie Star" laces itself a little too tighly into Alison Goldfrapp's glam pop corset, while "Cry Baby" is stuffed to the gills with syndrums and cowhorns to the exclusion of much else. And the dubby song for her dad, "Scarlet Ribbons", is sweet but feels a little out of place. But these are quibbles. In a year of low-stakes disappointment for European pop, Overpowered is a triumph.
