In the UK it's hard to hear Ellie Goulding above the hullaballoo of the hype-cycles. Tipped in January as the sound of 2010 in two tastemaker polls, she's received distinctly underwhelmed reviews now her album has been released. It's an odd record to have been caught in the crossfire: There's no high concept or big personality, it doesn't ride any particular fashion wave or nostalgia agenda. Instead critics have seized upon a sense of contrivance, the idea that UK pop culture is meme-splicing from the recent past, and that Goulding has been cynically designed to hitch the nu-folk fad of 2008 (Laura Marling) to the 1980s pop vogue of last year (Little Boots) and achieve full-spectrum media approval from Mojo to Popjustice. And so she's getting shot by both sides: not folky enough for purists, not sensational enough for the pop crowd, but mid-market, middlebrow-- the new Dido.
If she'd been born Else Goldsdottir, and hailed from Helsinki rather than Hereford, Goulding probably wouldn't have these problems. Maybe it's because ABBA started out in folk groups, but the Scandinavians seem more comfortable with the idea of a confessional pop that marries immediacy with intimacy. Goulding would fit in perfectly alongside Lykke Li, Jenny Wilson, even Robyn.
Outside of its immediate context, Lights is a sometimes great, always promising debut. It's an album about leaving home, and it works best when the contrast between the folk singer and the pop production chimes with the tensions between the pull of home and the allure of the city. "Guns and Horses" may be the best opening invitation for travel since "Two Divided by Zero" kicked off the Pet Shop Boys' Please: "Let's join forces, we've got our guns and horses...." It builds from spare acoustics to urgent trance pop-- "I left my house, left my clothes, door widen open, heaven knows, but you're so worth it, you are..."-- concluding with a desperate a cappella coda, and a brief breathless chuckle at her casual audacity.
"Wish I Stayed" is apparently the first song that Goulding emailed to Vincent Frank (aka Frankmusik, south London's bedroom pop auteur) as an acoustic songwriter. It's still the song that best captures the tensions of Lights, with Goulding singing of "skipping ropes, trampolines" and crafty schoolgirl smokes. It's reminiscent of the suburban pop of the Sundays (if they'd had an electro makeover like their forbears Everything But the Girl)-- the details of small lives and sitting room triumphs, the low horizons and "the carelessness of running away."
Lights is mostly produced by Frank's protégé Starsmith, and he does a largely good job, notably on the euphoric e-rush of "Starry Eyed" and "Under the Sheets", a grand, almost Björkian hyperballad. On the negative side, "The Writer" is a big bluster of a song, with a chorus where the spectre of the Cranberries' Dolores O'Riordan is all too vivid, whose future success could be Goulding's undoing. The cheap tinsel backing track to "I'll Hold My Breath" is reminiscent of Wham!'s "Last Christmas", while "Your Biggest Mistake" could be a Frankmusik cast-off.
But at its best Lights feels remarkably uncontrived, cantering across genres, following personal whims and visions rather than marketing agendas. Unusually for a British pop debut album, it doesn't seem desperate for the immediate approval of chart success. You get the feeling Goulding could write another album or two (after Lights, Cameras, and then Action) before she really gets going, becoming the sound of 2012 or 2015 or whenever. Whether the UK pop industry has the patience to bear with her remains to be seen.
