Lisa Mitchell: leave her alone and she will come home

CD Review
Lisa Mitchell
Wonder
(Warner Music)

It’s hard to talk about Lisa Mitchell without mentioning Australian Idol, so I guess I should begin by explaining why I’ve been a fan of the show.  We  lived overseas for the first two seasons of Idol so kind of missed the initial buzz it generated.  But one thing that was really noticeable when we came back, and maybe only to people like us who’d been away, is that the show went some way towards changing the social culture at schools.  I don’t want to oversell this idea, but it really did make it easier for a kid who wasn’t so much into sport and was instead into singing or even dancing, find a place.  Idol conferred some sort of legitimacy on the idea that you could be a performer.  No small thing.

That’s not the only thing I like about it, but it is a pretty good legacy for a show like that.  Anyway, having watched virtually every episode from Series Three onwards, I would also say the show has probably ruined as many careers as it has made.  Not just careers, but artistic lives.  I certainly don’t just blame the show for that — nobody forces people to audition — but it is as well to acknowledge the reality.  And Lisa Mitchell, from my vantage point, was one the kids it chewed up and spat out.

Hailed in the early stages as some sort of Australian musical wunderkid, the show gradually reduced her to rubble.  A combination of the inane demand that contestants perform in a range of styles — from disco to big band — with the truly lunatic rantings of the “judges”, in which I include Marcia Hines’ cryptic mumblings whereby she says everything except what she means, slowly but surely saw Mitchell’s self-confidence taken from her, leaving her in, what I remember, as a state of utter confusion by the time she exited some time after the “disco” round.

Lisa Mitchell probably was never an Australian Idol, whatever that might be.  She was certainly not meant to be a disco singer or a belter of big band numbers either.  What she was was a shy kid with an interesting but not very big or versatile voice who had begun to work out a way to express herself musically.  I liked what she did and so I was interested to hear this, her first album.

The verdict is mixed.

First up, it’s great that she has found a home at Warner Music after, I presume, failing to find one at Sony, the company associated with Idol.   (When I was in the music retail business — not to mention the video retail business — Warner were always the best company to deal with, even if they did guard their product more fiercely than anyone else.  There was always something classy about them and it shows in this album.)

Second, the album is good, with a couple of tracks tripping over into the great category.  I gotta say, I don’t really think it is likely to be an album that appeals to the Crikey demographic, but I’m sure plenty of your kids will like it.   And that’s not a put down, in case you are tempted to think so.

My biggest concern is that some of the songs just don’t cut it and that, in an attempt to make them sound better than they do, there is some pretty heavy handed production filling up the spaces with various bells and whistles.  And I mean that literally: bells and whistles.  Not sure who to blame here: those in control or Mitchell herself.  While I guess a case can be made that the idea is to clothe the album in the sort of sonic wardrobe that makes it distinctive and appealing to the teenage demographic it is targetted at, it is a bit like putting a couple of extra cups of sugar in the cupcake mix and then loading a whole pile of lollies on top of the icing as well.  The net effect is the musical equivalent of tooth decay and pimples.

For me the tracks that really offend in this regard are ‘Neopolitan Dreams’, ‘Coin Laundry’, ‘Red Wine Lips’ and ‘Heroine’.  Rather than pump them up on the sonic steroids, it might’ve been better to just leave them off (though I’d still probably leave ‘Coin Laundry’ on: as much as it annoys me, I can see why you might want it there as a single and scene-setter.)

The rest of the album is just fine, and two tracks, ‘Pirouette’ and ‘Oh, Hark’ are great, with strong and catchy melodies, some decent lyrics, and what you might call at this early stage, classic Lisa Miller Mitchell vocal performances.  I really liked them, and ‘So Jealous’, ‘Clean White Love’ and ‘Stevie’ aren’t bad either.

But even these good-to-great tracks are almost ruined by the sugar-and-spice production.  It’s like someone just didn’t have enough confidence to let the songs stand on their own two feet.  I’m not sure who this failure of nerve is down to, but they need to get a spine.  My point is proved when you listen to the four tracks on the bonus disc that comes with the album.  These are listed as demos, and so they are recorded without all the bells and whistles and they almost the strongest part of the package.  It is really noticeable, to my ears anyway, on ‘Oh, Hark’, which we get to hear in the souped-up, sugar-hit version on the main album, and then again in its unpumped version on the bonus disc.  Know which one I prefer.

So here’s my gratuitous, non-invested advice: Warner have a talented performer on their hands who needs some serious nurturing and trust from them.  She’s still only young, finding her feet, and so needs a bit of space to grow.  Leave her alone — as much as your investment will allow — and I reckon she will be churning out memorable albums a decade from now.  One thing I’m certain of: she’ll be around a lot longer the television show that ‘discovered’ her and that even as we speak is sputtering into irrelevance.