Duffy - Rockferry
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“Don’t spend all your money,” Duffy warbles imploringly on the fifth track of her debut long-player Rockferry, “on syrup and honey”. No, it’s not a well-intentioned warning to avoid those plummeting Tate & Lyle shares – it’s just a word of advice for her lover, of course. The reason being because she’s sweeter, you see. Can you hear the clatter of a thousand giant lyrical pennies dropping?
Maybe it’s a bit unfair to pick out a single line, but it’s indicative of the subtle-as-a-sledgehammer, contrived nature of this record, both lyrically and musically. It just all sounds like it’s been done a million times before, and to be frank it probably has - and almost exclusively between 1964 and 1969 at that.
Things start swimmingly with the title track, Duffy’s brooding, slow-building and powerful first single. But from second song ‘Warwick Avenue’ onwards, the album slowly and surely drifts into aural wallpaper territory, only managing to rouse you from a Radio 2-like slumber when the pounding Lulu-like No.1 hit ‘Mercy’ fires up.
The whole ‘60s thing, from the Welsh songstress looking like Cathy Come Home pin-up Carol White on the cover, to the sweeping, Motown-lite (More Fence than Wall of Sound) production – particularly on closing track ‘Distant Dreamer’ - is seriously overplayed. I wouldn’t be surprised if her next video is shot in black and white using an exact replica of the Ready, Steady, Go! set.
Rockferry is by no means bad. It’s just not special enough to live up to all of that pre-release hype.
Stewart Turner
