Sian Alice Group-Troubled Shaken etc.

The Social Registry
2009

The second album from UK's Sian Alice Group includes a lot of angles and approaches, but they achieve varied results at best. There is jazz, folk and more tossed into a multi-layered approach. At best the results are rich and warm, but more often than not their need for repetition hampers the impact could have been there. The vocals are soft, floating and manage to achieve a hypnotic effect on occasion. The song structure and the way the music fades back into the background lets me know that pushing the vocals is a major goal. This band see-saws between feast and famine to some extent. They often push forth thick bursts of sound with every instrument contributing, but just as quickly they fade into bland lines and they lapse into a tendency to try and cruise to the end of the song. Sian Alice Group show hints of originality and some vision towards tapping into some effective and insightful passages. Unfortunately they don't pursue those ideas enough and their bright lights seem all too temporary. All too often I found myself reaching for the fast forward button halfway through a song which of course is never a good sign. Their talent is obvious, but the ideas are either limited, restrained or a combination of both.