My Paper Made Men - Amy Studt Album Review
Amy Studt
Album Review
It's an interesting assessment of exactly how cliched the sound of Amy Studt's sophomore effort is that I could imagine (with an alarming degree of accuracy, having checked YouTube) what her first batch of singles must have sounded like with no familiarity of her back catalogue. 'My Paper Made Men' is a typical example of young pop starlet trying desperately to show that she has more depth than a particularly shallow puddle by throwing in a more orchestral, wannabe-epic scope while discussing pain, fragility and all that downer-stuff. If Evanescence are the poor man's Tori Amos, then Amy Studt's current guise is of a homeless man's Evanescence.
The main issues with the album could be placed into two categories: the first is that at just 22 years old, it feels completely insincere for Amy to switch from writing Avril Lavigne style pop-fluff about not fitting in with cool kids to attempting profound sentiment by discussing how fragile and painful life is. The second, and possibly a less unreasonable complaint, is that the music is largely unmemorable, and a particularly disinteresting example of her new genre.
To tackle my first issue, have a look at the lyrics to recent MySpace hit ‘Furniture’:
I am only pieces of you
held together with paper glue
behind the skin, my divinity
behind the skin, my only sanctuary.
...which is a fine example of bargain bin profundity if ever there was one. In a sense, it’s not too far removed from her last persona in that it still could easily come from the scrap book of an unhappy teenage girl. This may be completely unfair if her original sound was down to label pressure, but either way, at one point there was insincerity, and it doesn't make her music feel any more mature.
This wouldn't be a problem, of course, if the tunes were any good, but disappointingly they're not. On a purely technical level, it's produced well enough, and the instruments are played proficiently, but it doesn't hang together as anything remarkable. And with virtually every song reaching a similar crescendo designed to showcase Amy's (admittedly decent) voice, there's very little variety to speak of – unless you consider the signposted switch from quiet to loud as some kind of significant musical breakthrough.
The one positive to take from the album is the slightly above average 'Nice Boys' which throws pretentiousness to the wind and delivers a song pitched about half way between the misfiring epic of the rest of the album and the pop-rock of her Polydor days. It's the only track on the promo that I can label as catchy, despite its playground style backing vocals and over familiar lyrical sentiment (“nice boys finish last,” eh? I find your ideas intriguing and wish to subscribe to your newsletter.)
It's a brave decision to take a wholly new direction, and it’s no wonder that Studt decided to do that after her first label lost interest, but in this case you can't help but feel the choice has backfired. You have to be very talented to be able to switch genres quite so easily, and if this first attempt is anything to go by, regrettably she simply doesn't have it. It will be interesting to see where she goes from here – still in her early 20s, she has plenty of time to find a better, more interesting direction.