Dido, No Angel
Cheeky/Arista, 1999
1. Here With Me
2. Hunter
3. Don’t Think Of Me
4. My Lover’s Gone
5. All You Want
6. Thank You
7. Honestly OK
8. Slide
9. Isobel
10. I’m No Angel
11. My Life
12. Take My Hand (Bonus Track)
“Here With Me”
It is to my own shame that I have waited an unforgivable TWENTY-SEVEN YEARS to give this album a proper listen. It’s not like I wasn’t aware of it. You can’t have been alive in Western society for as long as I have and not have heard “Here With Me” and “Thank You.” They are unavoidable. Hell, “Thank You” is on repeat in my car, on a playlist that I put together myself. I’ve seen this album cover a thousand times. Now that I’ve heard the album in its entirety, it honestly feels shameful that I haven’t dipped into this sooner. There really is no excuse.
“My Lover’s Gone”
This collection of music is so well written, so expertly recorded, and so flawlessly performed that it’s difficult to wrap my head around the fact that this is a debut album. Listening to this, I can’t help but compare this to how it must have felt in 1969, putting Led Zeppelin I or Crosby, Stills & Nash on the turntable for the first time and hearing songs that were brand new, but so well made they sound like they’ve been distilled and perfected by a thousand singers over a hundred years. And while it may sound odd to lump No Angel in with guitar heavy classic rock, they all have one extraordinarily important thing in common: the songs on these albums are instant classics.
“Thank You”
I know that during the course of this year I am eventually going to cross paths with an album that is truly a chore to get through. I haven’t experienced that yet, but I believe with No Angel I have experienced the opposite. This is so well crafted that the end of the album came as a slight shock. It’s not that the end is abrupt, it’s just that I wanted more. I found myself looking at the extra tracks on the Japanese release and the various special editions and wishing I had those versions. And that’s the mark of an excellent artist. They make you immediately want more of what they have to offer. And I definitely want more of this.
“Honestly OK”