She may be pretty and she may be clever but that's no help here sweetheart...
'Pretty Things' sounds like something you'd find on the soundtrack of a Jean-Pierre Jeunet movie. Yup, it's a ballad. A sickly-sweet-sugary-sucrose-encrusted ballad. Fuck.
Let's see. It's got acoustic guitars; it's sung by a classically beautiful but probably completely batty chick; lyrically it's astute as a London cab driver that says 'Is it cold out?' when you've gotten into his wagon with hands as blue as Roy Chubby Brown's pillow talk and nuts the size of Bono's two brain cells; and musically it's as challenging as Zodiac from Gladiators.
You'd think I'd hate it. I don't.
You see I am a big old softy. I enjoy cooking; I own 'Pretty in Pink' on DVD; I cry whenever I listen to 'A Man I'll Never Be' by Boston and 'Open Arms' by Journey - I have a heart, damn you! And so I like 'Pretty Things' too.
This single probably won't even chart. The only time you'll hear it will be during one of those 'touching' moments on 'Scrubs' or some other mindless HBO crap but who cares?
'Pretty Things' is taken from Athena Andreadis's new album 'Breathe With Me' and while it may be a bizarrely portentous record about the totemic tendencies of lovers and the illusory reclamation of a sense of one's self, Athena's voice sounds a bit French to me and that's one hell of a turn on.