 | Although she wasn't officially anointed Indie Spice by the British music press until after the Spice Girls' second album, Melanie Chisholm made it clear from the beginning of the group's phenomenal success that she preferred Blur to Take That. Of course, her personal musical tastes never surfaced on the Spices' first two albums, which may be the reason she is the first Spice to release a solo album while still in the group (Geri Halliwell holds the honor of having the first solo Spice album, but her Schizophonic was released after she left the group). Since the Spice Girls were known as much for their personalities as they were for their music, some skeptics might consider the prospect of a solo Spice album a little dubious, but Mel C really does have something to prove with her debut, Northern Star -- she wants to break from her Sporty Spice persona while proving herself as a legitimate musician. And she more or less does, with a surprisingly diverse and successful record. Unlike her Spicemates, Melanie C's singing isn't solely reliant on character. She has a fairly strong voice, a good sense of melody, and carries a tune with some personality. That was evident on both Spice albums, plus live performances, where she bolstered the weaker voices of Posh and Baby. That strong voice is one of the reasons why the genre-hopping of Northern Star works, since she can convincingly deliver everything from the pop balladry of the title track to the snarling, neo-industrial punk statement of purpose "Goin' Down." And it's a good thing that she can sound convincing on a variety of different styles, since Northern Star seems to be an attempt to summarize pop music circa 1999. It begins with "Go!," a William Orbit-produced slice of swinging '60s pop with electronica underpinnings, and closes with the ballad "Feel the Sun." In between, she tries a bit of everything -- Brit pop on "Suddenly Monday," post-Garbage modern rock on "Ga Ga," techno-inflected dance on "I Turn to You," urban balladry on "Never Be the Same Again" (complete with a rap by Left Eye Lopes), and melodic adult pop on "If That Were Me," "Why," "Closer," and "Be the One." Certainly, that's a bit more stylistically schizophonic than Halliwell's album, and since a number of different producers -- Orbit, Rick Nowels, Marius DeVries, Rick Rubin, and Craig Armstrong among them -- it also plays that way, but that's part of the album's charm. Melanie C could have taken the easy way out and delivered an album that was essentially just a Spice Girls record, the way Halliwell did. She realized there was no reason to do a solo record if that's what she was going to do, so she made a record that is decidedly un-Spice, yet still within the pop mainstream...and she did it successfully. That doesn't mean it's a knock-out, however. Instead, Northern Star is a solid, well-crafted alterna-pop of modest but palpable charms. That may not be what Spice Girls fanatics want to hear, but that's precisely why Northern Star is unexpectedly refreshing. |