As career reinventions go, Emma Bunton's is not in the John Lydon ballpark. Yet where there was once Baby Spice and then the girl next door of her debut album period, she’s now being posited as a sex kitten circa mid-60s Carnaby Street. Everything about "Free Me" has been carefully designed to reflect this, from Emma's Mary Quant-style outfits and the period-style "Stereo" symbol on the album sleeve to the music itself.
Ah yes, the music. "Free Me" is a strong opener, and "Maybe" is a great pop single, a sequin-gowned show-stopper that even those retro darlings Saint Etienne might tap a foot along to. It's a pity that the rest of the album contrives to move into clichéd, formulaic territory with strings and brass continually to the fore. Whereas in the hands of the great singers of the era like Dusty Springfield, the songs would have flown, here they just sound like pale facsimiles.
More than any other track, "Crickets Sing For Anamaria" that shows that sometimes it’s best not to stray from the territory you know well. A passable salsa swing, complete with whistles and massed percussion, is ruined by Bunton's cod-Spanish delivery. She redeems herself somewhat with a much brassier performance on the John Barryesque ballad "No Sign Of Life".
"Who The Hell Are You" is a wimpier cousin of the Spices' "Who Do You Think You Are", but of course with the ubiquitous string flourishes. Things predictably slow down towards the end of the album, to the closing tearjerker "Something So Beautiful".
So a great pop album this ain't, but it should serve as a useful audition piece for a career in West End musicals.
