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Roisin Murph – Overpowered review

By Emma Butterfield**** I feel a certain affinity with Róisín Murphy, as she’s clearly a frustrated science undergraduate. Why else would she refer to oxytocin (a hormone implicated in pair bonding and mate selection) in the title track of the album? She lets slip her innermost thoughts again in ‘Primitive’, which is actually all about evolution. She’s obviously not trying to break America. ‘Primitive’ is also the cheesiest and most sincere chill-out track I’ve ever heard – it’s what you might expect of Engelbert Humperdinck if he was a female science teacher.‘Overpowered’ is stripped down to a ticking snare drum and a chirpy honking synthetic bassline, with her vocals dominating. The combination works best when she’s actually singing, and not pretending to be Sophie Ellis-Bextor. Parts of the album have a juicy 70’s soul sound that’s listenable, seriously tongue-in-cheek (I hope), and slightly at odds with the mundane electronica of the filler tracks. Surprisingly, her voice does better with the more challenging material, and warms up to the big declarations of ‘Tell Everybody’, by which point she’s exhorting us to tell everybody that she’s our baby. She’s clearly more interested in evolution than in feminism. This self-subjugation takes a slightly creepy tone by the final track ‘Scarlet Ribbons’, at which point she’s breathily whispering that she’ll always be our little girl, and do as we ask. Apparently this loyalty is due to the listener because he/we found a scarlet ribbon for her hair, rather than her Oedipus complex, but I’m not sure I believe her.‘Let me know’ is an unabashed booty call, set to a twanging funk with syncopated hand-claps – begging for sex never sounded so good. The clapping also features on ‘Dear Miami’, another lounge number which is so laid back that it doesn’t bother going anywhere for 3 minutes. She’s at her best when asserting herself vocally and lyrically – if she burnt her bra she’d be perfect.

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