Sharleen Spiteri - The Movie Songbook Album Review

With her band Texas currently on hiatus Sharleen Spiteri released her debut solo record entitled 'Melody' in 2008. Reported sales of 300,000 copies, of which a third were in UK, certified it a success and now the Glaswegian follows it up with a collection of songs from movie soundtracks.

Keeping in line with the theme of the silver screen, Spiteri's second solo album can easily be divided into the good, the bad and the ugly. It is at it's best when Spiteri has a more subtle background as evidenced by the balladry of 'Windmills Of Your Mind' and 'Many Rivers To Cross', the latter of which lets her vocals shine through to 'own' the song very much as hers. She also works the disco of The Bee Gees' 'If I Can't Have You' very well, but aside from this the covers fall flat. 'Between The Bars' is dreary while her take on 'Pretty Woman' fails to charm like the Roy Orbison original. The attempt to lighten the mood of 'Take My Breath Away' loses all the sultry quality that accompanied Tom Cruise in 'Top Gun', but one track above all stands out as the worst: 'Sound Of Silence'. Spiteri is certainly brave for tackling the number but she was never likely to better the haunting performance of Simon And Garfunkel and in truth maybe nobody would better it. A new Texas album is in the pipeline for 2011 and based on this then it comes at the right time, as the band's material will be a more comfortable listen than this.

Alex Lai