Female pop stars come and go, and you have to wonder if it really is a career choice you would advise for your all-singing, all-dancing daughter or little sister. First come the years of trying to be taken seriously in an industry that remains far more sexist and male-dominated than most other professions. Then come objectification and emphasis of image over personality. And when the big time hits, fame’s hall of mirrors brings a distortion of perspective that results in previously undemanding young women suddenly discovering they cannot sing unless their personal guru has spent an hour or two realigning their chakras. Then, when the hits dry up, you have to hang around for a decade or two before milking the lucrative nostalgia market.
This week, Alice Gold makes her debut with an album that has a depth and robustness that you feel will anchor her firmly enough to deal with the tidal waves of a pop career.
At its best, Seven Rainbows combines a pure pop sensibility with something a little more mysterious. Her singing style is reminiscent of floaty-dress- wearing hippy-era singers such as Grace Slick and most of all — although she’s not someone that gets mentioned much these days — Melanie. Seasons Change, which opens the album, distils these influences, with Gold eschewing vocal gymnastics and simply hitting the notes of a powerfully melodic tune.
The musical setting for Seasons Change is well judged, too. There’s a low church- like hum that gives it a warm, ancient quality, which makes sense when you discover that the organ is played by Ollie Parfitt, formerly of the medieval-rock band Circulus, whose goal was to find the musical link between 1972 and 1272.
Runaway Love, a song about popping off to Paris for a romantic weekend, sounds like a 1960s single by a long-forgotten French singer that you might unearth in a dépôt vente, and it’s delightfully breezy with it.
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These musical references suggest a certain amount of knowledge, experience and curiosity, and sure enough, the 28-year-old has had a full life. Her mother died when she was 22, leading to a period of rootless wandering that saw her win a camper van in a poker game and travel around America for six months. She returned to England to answer a job advertisement for a nanny and ended up looking after Prince Sébastien, the youngest son to Grand Duke Henri and Grand Duchess Maria Teresa of Luxembourg. Gold’s ticket to Easy Street in one of Europe’s smallest countries came to an abrupt end, however, when the duchess found a joint in her bedroom.
The album was written when Gold returned to a rather more normal existence of part-time jobs and small gigs in London. As a result the lyrics have a poetic sensibility with a grounding in reality — How Long Can These Streets Be Empty? is about her life since her mother died — and Seven Rainbows is the bright, creative and frequently very catchy debut by a woman who sounds as if she has soaked in enough sadness and reflection to have something actually to sing about.