CD - Natalie Bassingthwaighte - 1000 Stars

Reviews, By davidb, 11th March, 2009

Natalie Bassingthwaighte comes across as the kind of ballsy, sun-kissed Aussie chick who could hold her beer and have your back, all with a flick of her enviable mane. Now she’s well and truly arrived as a star in her own right with 1000 Stars, which went to Number 1 in Australia in its first week out of the gate. Oh, and on top of that, she loves us.

As ace soapie bitch and talent quest den mother, La Bass has been afforded an enviable brand awareness, and there is a certain charm to the image she’s pulled together and finessed here. Proudly thirtysomething, the album artwork makes no attempt to reverse or disguise this truth, and tracks like Catch Me If You Can and first single Alive ostensibly speak to a sense of hard-won empowerment, positivity and self-awareness.

Running with the vibe of Alive, Supersensual steals several moves from top shelf Kylie and, quite brazenly, the entire hook from Blondie’s Heart of Glass.

Weirdly though, the Bass sass is almost entirely absent from the album, and every moment here is as identikit and innocuous as a quick scan of the song titles suggest. When she begins Why Do I by noting “This is not me at all, I used to be so much stronger” there’s a momentary, tantalising sense that we’re onto something real, but it’s ultimately all so soulless and without spark that any insight, or irony, is clearly accidental.

Maybe all that confidence is a facade, or maybe it’s first time nerves, but there’s barely a lyric, vocal or even a note in the production that pulses with personality. Bassingthwaighte may well be smart enough to know that safe and nice are the only four letter words that the mainstream world she clearly wants to inhabit will let her cash in, but 1000 Stars feels like a chance squandered.

Sounding just like every other pop fembot and like nothing much at all, I don’t even think you can dance to most of it.

Natalie Bassingthwaighte – 1000 Stars is out now through Sony BMG.