Siobhan Donaghy: 'Ghosts'

It’s been seven years since Siobhan Donaghy was heard, for the first and last time, on a bona fide hit single. She stole the show on the Sugababes’ Shangri Las-on-WKD smash ‘Overload’, but quit the sulky pop trio a year later after her bandmates apparently invented a new language to prevent her from talking to them. Ouch. Her solo debut – 2003’s Revolution In Me - sold fewer than 10,000 copies, so what hope is there for Donaghy in the frosty pop climate of 2007? The train’s coming and, if she’s not careful, we sure know its destination: the dumper.

All of which makes Ghosts a singularly unlikely triumph. Alongside producer James Sanger (U2, Dido, Keane), Donaghy has crafted a record that manages to be accessible without being crass, ethereal without sounding like the soundtrack to a meeting of white witches on Hampstead Heath, and adult without resembling something that Celine Dion might screech. Recent single ‘So You Say’ underlines Donaghy’s intentions neatly: elegant, understated verses make way for a colossal chorus, while Donaghy’s multi-tracked vocals attack the heartbroken lyrics with real conviction.

Donaghy has admitted that she and Sanger didn’t see eye to eye for much of the recording process – hardly a surprise considering that Sanger was battling heroin addiction at the time – and the tension between producer and popstrel looms large over this record. As Ghosts progresses, Sanger’s soundscapes become ever more layered and portentous, while Donaghy’s vocals become bigger, bolder and more audacious. The results are frequently inspired. The unhinged electronica of ‘Medevac’ houses lyrics about medical evacuation by helicopter – has someone been watching re-runs of Flying Doctors on UK Gold lately? – a chorus the size of Mars and a breathtakingly ballsy vocal from Donaghy. ‘Coming Up For Air’, whose skittish rhythm track recalls Ray Of Light, is as intense and brooding as Colin Firth’s depiction of Mr Darcy. Best of all is ‘Goldfish’, an epic tale of mental anguish whose harmony-drenched final minutes manage to evoke all the sweeping grandeur of ‘Unchained Melody’.

At times Donaghy wears her influences rather too literally – ‘Don’t Give It Up’ could be an offcut from Kate Bush’s Hounds of Love opus, while the backwards studio trickery of ‘Ghosts’ is a straight nick from the Cocteau Twins – but she manages to carve out a winning niche for herself by the end of the record. And how. Nobody else in 2007 is making records this bold, this big-hearted and this defiantly different.