aaamusic | On 27, Aug 2012

From the start, I couldn’t help but feel a little put off by ‘There You Are’ as a contrived and bland pop ballad. Acoustic guitars, pianos, gentle and regular percussion, and that godawful “happy” synth whoosh and tinkle I though died in the late 1990s. Granted, Lisbee Stainton does have a very nice voice, hitting the syrupy melody with fairylike grace, but in this context it all feels so contrived that I can’t appreciate it. Having looked up Stainton’s earlier stuff, I find an artist who was always aiming for the big pop thing, and I can live with that, but this arrangement, when compared to the tender, less polished songs such as ‘Red’, despite a vaguely recognisable trajectory, sounds like it was made by a Disney starlet rather than the appealing yet artistic singer-songwriter Stainton seems to want to be.

★★★★★

KAtie H-Halinski