TRACEY BRENNECKE’s rise from obscurity is all the more astonishing given the steadfast ordinariness of her music and her voice. We’re told that TRACEY grew up on a “tough council estate with few opportunities” and that her “mum scrubbed floors” while Tracey “learnt her craft” but there is absolutely nothing in her lyrics or music that reflects this background.
So why bother telling us, or are we supposed to approve of her just because she managed to move on from such “Dickensian” beginnings? I grew up on a council estate in Scotland with few opportunities. But then again I was between the age of 6 and 13 and so “opportunities” – an arbitrary concept at best in this context - were not an essential part of my growing up experience. Being loved, freedom to read books, listen to music and run wild seemed to be sufficient.
Sorry to bang on about this but Mick and Keef grew up in a safe and protected middle-class home counties environment and – Blimey! Who’d have thought? – The Glimmer Twins didn’t become accountants. Mind you I’ve missed not hearing their reflections of childhood in songs such as ‘Have You Seen Your Mother Tarquin (Standing In The Queue At Waitrose)’ or ‘Hey You, Get Off My Land”.
The press blurb also declares pompously that the “pop music market has been saturated with manufactured, plastic, dolled up princesses for too long” and then a short breath later informs us that TRACEY’s debut album has been produced by Stevie Van Lange “whose credits include the likes of Atomic Kitten”.
While no Nuclear Mutton, TRACEY or Ms. BRENNECKE (she used to be a school teacher) still conforms to a formulaic pattern as regards her music. We’re in Shania Twain, Dido, Texas, Corrs territory with a touch of Star Search, Eurovision and an end of the pier Summertime Special sprinkled on top for good measure. Rather than manufactured for Radio One this is pre-fab'ed for Radio Two and for people who buy records as a “retail experience”.
It all goes horribly wrong from the outset. Opening track ‘The First To Know’ threatens to break into the theme tune to ‘Home and Away’ with a bit of Frampton’s ‘Baby, I Love Your Way’ in the chorus. ‘What’s A Girl To Do’ bops along like a rock-lite version of Fairground Attraction’s ‘Perfect’. ‘Better Than Me’ improves things with its country-rock arrangement but is still unexceptional. Lyrically ‘I Hate Love’ is perhaps the most ineffectual with its self-pitying “boo-hoo poor me” tone as the words “I hate love and I don’t think love likes me” are repeated. When she sings “Hey, Mr. Cupid don’t point those arrows at me” I’m reminded of David Brent singing the songs of his old band Foregone Conclusion.
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On ‘Saturday Girl’ it becomes clear that you can take the school teacher out of the school but not out of the girl as evidenced by the patronising lyrics: “When Friday comes it’s the same old story / Office girls in all their glory / That’s not for me / You party on and you drink too much / Talking to a guy named ‘Tel’/ You might live for your Friday nights / But I’m a Saturday girl”.
Sorry Miss, from now on I’ll go straight home after work.
And so it goes, with middle-of-the road-by-the-numbers-mid-tempo songs and clichéd ballads making up the remainder of the album. All songs go in the directions you expect and all the lyrics remain polite and bland in their predominantly lifeless commentary on love and relationships. Emotion, insight and individuality have been left at the studio door.
Ultimately TRACEY will probably succeed in the music industry, if not as a singer then as a song-writer as there’s always a market for such soulless guff. But it’s a sad reflection of the whole enterprise when I find myself more interested in the titbit that TRACEY’s “desire to play her own instruments..caused the rupture in her initial musical venture with the manufactured pop band The Thunderbugs.”
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