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'Smile It Confuses People', is a mediocre album at best, and a powerful example of the power of PR at worst.

As a pop-psuedo/folk package all (why have people been comparing her to Joni MItchel and Janis Joplin? WHY?), the songs are pleasant enough, but none have any sustainability. None have contagious musical hooks, or inspirational lyrics, or even challenging chord combinations.

With the exception of the debut single, all the tracks are painfully.., blah. Every track features hand clapping. Every track also features background 'jingle bells'. MOST tracks feature foot stomping as backing track. All of which combines to create a homogenous sludge that is the aural equivalent of eating plain celery. Celery by itself is mostly forgettable. Almost nutrition-less, it merely gives your mouth something distracting to do until you can find a flavourful acompanying dip, or better yet, figure out what real food to chew.

The official webpage maintains that Mz Thom wrote, the entire album herself. If that is true, (and the 'truth' of her as an artist is something I'll explore in just a moment,) then she is soley to blame for the identikit sound, and worse the intensely hakneyed lyrics which STUFF every song. As for her 'authentic' debut single "I wish I was a punk rocker", well I shall get to dissecting, deconstructing that later on. So with flat packed songs, lyrics similar to five year old poetry, and slightly less than mediocre vocal talents, Thom may well be a one hit wonder. Which brings me nicely to the hit single itself.

( Now for the Deconstruction, cut for those who do not care... )

The lyrics to this are of course ripe for lampooning. The first time I ever heard it, I thought to myself that the line was "I wish I was a bank robber with flowers in my hair", which is actually a better line, but there you go.

And let's not forget her dubious 'struggling artist' credentials.

Permit me to quote from the official webpage:

It was during the cold, short days at the start of 2006 that Sandi Thom had her Eureka! moment. Instead of driving to gigs up and down the country with her band in her clapped-out car, as she had done for years, the singer from Scotland resolved to try a different approach. She bought a webcam, and announced a run of 21 shows to be performed on consecutive nights during February and March in the basement of her flat in Tooting, South London. The audience capacity in the flat itself was limited to just six people. But the half-hour shows were to be broadcast, free of charge, via her website at www.sandithom.com. The first night, 70 people tuned in to watch, the next night it went up to 670. And by the middle of the second week she was performing to a peak audience of 70,000. By then, the suits from every major record label had visited the flat to see the show for themselves.

Now, we all know this is an utter LIE. A spinning of falsehoods, a stretching of the truth. In Short. P.R. Bumpf. Allow me to quote from Wednesday May 31, (2006) Copy of the guardian:

Thom has been compared to Janis Joplin and KT Tunstall and, according to the reams of press cuttings that accompanied her rise, was penniless and struggling until she secured a £1m deal with RCA Records by webcasting 21 gigs from her Tooting basement. But amid accusations that the webcast stunt was part of a contrived PR campaign, a Cambridge-based PR company yesterday confirmed it had been working with her since last June to boost her profile ahead of the release of her single I Wish I Was a Punk Rocker (With Flowers in My Hair),

And being caught out was the death knell of her popularity. British people love the underdog story and HATE feeling like they've been duped.

One week after the 'singer from nowhere stormed the charts', the single is no longer number one. This could simply be because people got sick of the insipid excuse for a song and simply stopped buying it, OR, it may be that the entire P.R. Stunt just left a sour note in the minds of the record buying public. Only the album sales will tell.

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