Review - Evening Standard 8/8/01

AFTER THE SNOGGING, NERINA GETS IT RIGHT

Lousy jobs and useless boyfriends - great material for an album.
Siobhan Grogan reports

After barmy Geri and boring Dido, the prospect of yet another pretty,
oh-so-earnest female singer is hardly appealing. So it's a relief to
discover that Brixton-based Nerina Pallot has a brain, a modicum of common
sense and no qualms about ridiculing labelmate Ronan Keating's new
Persil-white teeth. The fact that she writes great songs too, is a bonus.

Indeed, unlike her chart-polished counterparts, Nerina's gorgeous vocal-led
debut album, Dear Frustrated Superstar, is a labour of love.

It's the product of years of rejection, useless boyfriends and worse
jobs. This woman may even have persuaded you to buy a coffee table.

�I did terrible radio jingles for places like Alan's Furniture Warehouse,�
Nerina remembers, smiling. Now it feels like a bad dream. �They'd get you
in and say 'Can you do Mariah Carey or Celine Dion?'. There were times
when I was already feeling low and you're asked to put emotion into 'come
to us for the best prices in town' and you suddenly get this feeling of
horror that your whole life is going to be like this. I did loads of
things like that. Cover gigs, bar mitvahs. I nannied, made curtains and
worked in a bank where, if you were 15 minutes late, they'd knock a
15-minute segment off your pay. But at least I've got really nice,
home-made curtains in my flat.�

Soft furnishings aside, Nerina's love life was hardly going to plan
either. Listening to Dear Frustrated Superstar you begin to wonder how one
woman could get it wrong so many times.

�It's a bit tragic, isn't it?� Nerina chuckles.

�None of my songs are love songs because they all have dreadful
endings. One's about a coke addict I was with and one's about my
ex-boyfriend who didn't tell me it was over until got home and found he'd
packed all my stuff into a bag and left a note saying 'please leave'. Then
one's about those men you meet in bars who are like, 'hey baby, I earn 50
grand a year, therefore you should sleep with me',� Nerina shudders.

�Mind you, I did once snog an insurance salesman because I liked his green
eyes.�

Now finally in a relationship unlikely to inspire such scathing lyrics -
it's with her album's producer - and with a big-bucks record deal with
Polydor anda month-long residence at the Borderline, things are looking up
for Nerina Pallot. Her dramatic high-pitched vocals and piano backing have
already drawn favourable comparisons to Tori Amos, but a few other less
predictable names have been raised too. � I get Alanis Morissette because
we both have long hair and French-sounding names, but I'll only really
complain if people start comparing me to Tiffany.�

Her wistfully angelic, country-tinged debut single Patience should break
enough hearts to avoid that. Call it karma, call it old-fashioned
persistence, but Nerina Pallot proves you always get what you deserve in
the end. Give or take the odd insurance salesman.