Helen Boulding - Way to Go
Helen Boulding was “maid in Sheffield”, but now resides in London and has over the past year or so been making waves and drawing the attention of “some very weighty collaborators” such as Simon Tong of The Verve and The Good, The Bad and The Queen, Richard Wright of Pink Floyd and Squeeze songwriter Chris Difford. She also enlisted the services of Youth to produce her recently released debut album ‘New Red Dress’ and recently lent her vocals to a track on the Orb’s recent album. Such collaborations give Boulding a fairly impressive resume; it is however equally telling that her myspace page features the proclomation that her debut represents a “timeless” set of songs destined to “replace KT Tunstall’s ‘Eye to the telescope’ as the album of choice for your 20 something music lover”. It takes a certain type of music lover to appreciate the ‘talents’ of the likes of Tunstall and it is probably certain that Boulding’s brand of cross-over pop music will make substantial inroads with this group. The fact that Boulding’s upcoming album was named album of the week by Radio 2 would certainly corroborate this theory.
‘Way to go’ is a punchy, upbeat pop song which is reminiscent of ‘White on Blonde’ era Texas. It is not really my cup of tea, but is well-crafted, well-produced and with the inevitable support of industry big-wigs will invariably result in substantial success. However, when listening to the record and some of her other material, there remained the inescapable feeling that the creative talents that Boulding has worked with in creating her material could have perhaps been better utilised elsewhere.