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Sia, This is Acting review: a thrillingly intimate album that's so much more than just off-cuts

This album of tracks written for other stars makes you wish Sia Furler kept every song for herself 

Hugh Montgomery
Wednesday 27 January 2016 14:30 GMT
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Artwork for Sia's new song 'Reaper'
Artwork for Sia's new song 'Reaper'

You'll know the name of Sia Furler, but you certainly won't know the face. That's because the Australian songwriter, having made her name as a one-woman hit factory, has pursued her own solo career with a quite literal self-effacement, shielding herself with a massive fringe in public. Her latest album takes the modesty yet further: a collection of off-cuts originally written for other stars, its title compels the listener to see her music as good craftmanship, no more, no less.

The paradox is that this self-professedly impersonal album should feel more thrillingly intimate than many a supposedly soul-baring effort. That's thank to the remarkable instrument that is Furler's voice: huge but fragile, fearlessly ragged and wild, seemingly a conduit of a tumultuous past that has included drug addiction and mental health issues, it perfectly counterpoints her songs' robust construction in a way that makes you wish she kept every song she wrote for herself. Take "Bird Set Free" and "Alive", both ginormo self-empowerment anthems written for Adele: but where her soulful sophistication may have rendered them merely stirring, Sia produces something more complex, battle-cries from a volatile soul.

If skyscraping balladry is her metier though, then elsewhere Sia proves she can lend her expertise to lighter fare: "Move Your Body", written for Shakira, is a stuttering dancefloor magnet, while the loping, reggae-inflected "Cheap Thrills" sounds like the old-school Rihanna hit it should have been. Ending with the startlingly slurred break-up song "Space Between", if this is acting, then what would she be like doing it for real?

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