Hard to decide whether Alfred or Katherine has the better joke on the title…
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Alfred Soto: Or, How Not to Be Surprised That Church Calls This a Creative Risk. Going soft to loud — with the loud part amplified by power chords and yodeling — is her idea of a creative risk. It’d be more acceptable if she sang like a ghost.
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Iain Mew: I find this song startling and haunting if also a bit uncomfortable and difficult to listen to. Some of that is just how bare it is, and the stark opening and pure voice would stand out whoever it is was by, but the fact that it’s Charlotte Church makes a difference too. Not so much for the contrast to her previous material as the context supplied by her ongoing public profile, recent court case and statement to the Leveson Inquiry about all the harassment she’s had to put up with for a long time and all. I can’t help but read things into the narrative, to “mustn’t let it get you down”, which give it depth when it might otherwise have been vague and airy.
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Brad Shoup: We don’t have enough tunes, pop or no, serving a Charonian function. This one nicks the unsettling-lullabye sonics of OK Computer (which had its share of counsel) to shake Scrooge by the pyjamas. At the point she steps unsteadily over “Just think what you can get done,” I was dismayed, thinking she’d gone goffick. But the bass pulses, the backing vocalists howl, and Church brings out a little major coloration: it’s the righteous kind of anger, the kind that draws repentance. A wonderful little song.
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Anthony Easton: Church has always had a sense of humour (see her theme tunes), so I wondered how she would transition from glurgish child wonder to adult. I was hoping for something cheekier, but that’s my shit and not hers. This is gorgeous, and ambient, but of the art pop school — which kind of makes me wonder how much of a difference there is between that genre and later ambient work. Why does this remind me of Bjork at her less obtuse and not, let’s say, Enya? Is it because I like this and taste is still about demographic permissions?
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Jonathan Bogart: “Charlotte Church has a single out? And it’s called that? Okay, I bet I know what it sounds like.” And I was right, even unto the glum Fire-Arcadian bashing on the bridge.
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Katherine St Asaph: Biases first: Tissues and Issues was underrated by butthurt classical purists, skeptical pop fans, tabloid junkies and yeah, fine, its title. But I prefer that to Church’s old pure-little-voice schtick, considering one path leads to experimentation and one path leads to Celtic Woman. “Title Title Ghost” is a step back toward classical crossover, but not too far back — file it by Sarah Brightman’s pre-genre “Murder in Mairyland Park” cover, maybe. It’s got vibrato and glockenspiel and ghostly ethereal fluffstuff and no attempts at pop or levity, but more interesting is how this forefronts almost everything classical crossover has lurking in its influences: Kate Bush (the swooping sigh down from the verses is textbook Kick Inside), U2 (specifically, Achtung Baby), Broadway belting that sounds like someone mixed up their memories of the theater and a Cranberries concert. I have no idea what market trend Church thinks she’s catering to, but someone’s got to make this music.
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