Roisin's Ray of Light

Like Metro, UK newspaper The Observer gives Roisin's new album no less than five out of five stars:

Roisin Murphy, Overpowered
5 stars

No one makes music quite like the Roisin Murphy. It's time, thinks Garry Mulholland, that she was granted more acclaim

Irish chanteuse Roisin Murphy is a singular presence in 21st-century pop. Unlike your stereotypical, ultra-focused, career-obsessed modern young pop wannabe, Ms Murphy didn't particularly wanna be at all. The Wicklow-born and Manchester-raised singer hadn't sung a note when, at the age of 18, she approached a bloke she liked the look of at a Sheffield club and asked him, 'Do you like my tight sweater?' A pretty great chat-up line, all told; good enough to get her the guy (dance producer Mark Brydon), make her the lead singer of a twisted dance-pop duo called Moloko, and serve as the title of the pair's 1995 debut album. Roisin Murphy fell in love and fell into pop purely by chance. The more you fall into the lush dance-pop swirlings of this, Murphy's second solo album, the more you feel that it was pop's lucky day.

Overpowered, a sumptuous 11-track, all-killer-no-filler, electro-disco gem sees Murphy striving to get rid of her Big Hit Albatross. 'Sing it Back', you may recall, was the ubiquitous mainstream club anthem of 1999, which would have been all roses and kittens for Murphy and Brydon if it hadn't been a remix that didn't really sound like the rest of Moloko's more trippy, art-funk oeuvre.

But Roisin was always far closer in spirit to Bjork than Kylie. After a personal and professional split with Brydon, she chose to work with visionary art-jazz producer Matthew Herbert for her first solo album, 2005's Ruby Blue, on the kind of ambitious avant-pop hybrid that gets Bjork rapturous acclaim, but only got Murphy... well, a deal with EMI, at least, who thankfully recognised a genuine maverick when they heard one.

Inspired by the Eighties proto-house of D Train, Mantronix and Gwen Guthrie, but often sounding a dead-ringer for Yazoo, early Eurythmics and rave-era dance-popsters Electribe 101, Overpowered's bubbling, sensual, and soulful glitterball gems effortlessly tap into the perennial glory of feeling lost and lonely at the disco at the end of the world. If it feels like Murphy is singing about, and to, Mark Brydon on the likes of 'You Know Me Better' and 'Movie Star', then the deep beats, lush synths and subtle horns and strings provided by male producers/co-writers including Jimmy Douglass, Groove Armada's Andy Cato and Richard X work overtime to establish Murphy as sole captain of her own swish and swoony destiny.

As closing ballad 'Scarlet Ribbons' wends its gently reggae-fied way to the sweetest of endings, you realise that you've just been dreamily immersed in the best grown-up dance-pop album since Madonna's Ray of Light. Yep - that good. I hope Ireland doesn't get too offended if Britain comes to its senses and recognises Roisin Murphy as a National Treasure.

Download: 'Overpowered'; 'Tell Everybody'; 'Scarlet Ribbons'; 'Let Me Know'