Natalie Imbruglia
White Lilies Island

Distributed by
RCA

• Year: 2001
• Price: £11.99
• Rating: 10/10
• Cat. No: 74321-891212

Track listing:

1. That Day
2. Beauty On The Fire
3. Satellite
4. Do You Love
5. Wrong Impression
6. Goodbye
7. Everything Goes
8. Hurricane
9. Sunlight
10. Talk In Tongues
11. Butterflies
12. Come September

Four years on from the more than middling success of Left Of The Middle, Natalie Imbruglia - former Neighbours star, and blessed with looks fit to grace the cover of any beauty magazine (indeed she is now the face of L'Oreal) - was faced with a familiar quandary. Repeat the formula of hook-laden but slightly... er, left of centre pop-rock, or reflect the evolution any songwriter/musician experiences and take a few risks?

Well, there is a mixture of the familiar and unexpected on White Lilies Island - named after the retreat where she eventually managed to create the album - and mostly it's the latter.

The awkward, overly-verbose single That Day couldn't have offered a less accurate guide of what to expect from the album it trailed so indifferently. Its grungy, tune-free approach is thankfully the absolute exception rather than the rule, so perhaps it's just as well the song opens White Lilies Island, rather than interrupt the flow of the other 11 tracks.

The first three singles from this album.

Soaring, inescapably catchy pop, the kind which Torn pretty much perfected to the tune of 1 million copies, returns with the gorgeous Sundays-esque strum of Wrong Impression, while the enchanting Beauty On The Fire adds some strident beats to sublime effect. Sunlight is another fine example of the new Imbruglia sound, less artificial than before, and strong on craftsmanship. Hurricane, meanwhile, provides a stunning centrepiece, an anthemic ballad with real substance.

Gentler takes on the alt.rock-chick blueprint also abound, revealing an equally adept deftness of touch. Satellite, Goodbye and Come September betray Imbrugliua's love of early 1970s Joni Mitchell, light as the breeze and sweetly sung.

Although not the commercial smash that its predecessor was, White Lilies Island marks the moment when Natalie Imbruglia emphatically emerged as an artist of some stature. Song-for-song, there simply aren't any current albums which can match this collection.

Review copyright © Liam Carey, 2002.