The year has already brought a bumper crop of female nouveau-soul singers from the United Kingdom – and they’re still coming: Meet Amy MacDonald, the Scottish chanteuse whose debut has already spun off a handful of hit singles and moved a million units across the pond. The timing of This Is the Life’s release will provoke comparisons to Duffy and Adele, but vocally, MacDonald bears more of a resemblance to Dolores O’Riordan, with a little Kirsty MacColl and Sinéad Lohan thrown in for good measure, blended with acoustic guitar-based singer/songwriter arrangements. All these other names are helpful for providing musical points of reference, but they also do a fair job of summing up MacDonald’s main problem – namely, her music does a better job of evoking others’ than it does of standing on its own. Her songs are agreeable enough, particularly the quieter ones, but none of them are particularly memorable. (Decca will also have its work cut out for itself when it comes to promoting such oh-so-British tracks as “Footballer’s Wife.”) Still, if she lacks the sort of killer first single that peers such as Adele have enjoyed, MacDonald does boast a quiet consistency entirely in keeping with her album’s muted, ‘70s-inspired artwork. One to keep an ear on. (Decca 2008)
