During the heady days of Britpop in the 1990s, when ROSIE WILBY wasn’t charting the highs, lows and hot goss in her popular column ‘Rosie’s Pop Diary’ (remember the magazine ‘Making Music’?), she was pursuing her own dreams as a performer.
It took her on something of a rollercoaster ride and supplied quite a fund of anecdotes along the way. Let’s face it, few people out there can boast of CV entries including playing Glastonbury, supporting Bob Geldof or receiving a rave review for their show at Ronnie Scott’s, but Wilby can lay claim to all three. Yet, over the past few years she’s concentrated primarily on stand up comedy with some success. Her show – also called ‘Rosie’s Pop Diary’ and based upon those heady days of the ‘90s – premiered at the Edinburgh Fringe and again received a brace of rave reviews.
All good stuff, but within this whirlwind of activity, Wilby recorded her one (and only) album ‘Precious Hours’, which saw release on the Catflap label back in the mists of 2000. The success of ‘Rosie’s Pop Diary’ has given her the opportunity to re-launch it and that’s most definitely a good thing.
However, while Rosie may have been caught in the eye of the Britpop hurricane, ‘Precious Hours’ is primarily accomplished singer/ songwriter fare, elevated several notches by her emotive vocal performance. Illustrious names like Kate Bush have previously been bandied around in relation to Wilby, but on tracks like the sumptuous opener ‘This Time’ and the slow-burning ‘Take My Hand’ (featuring wonderfully portentous, Morrissey-esque lyrics such as “Mother, are the demons here/ to fill my heart with blood and life and fear?”), such claims don’t sound so fanciful, while her icy, Beth Gibbons-style delivery on the brooding ‘This Love’ provides another of the LP’S high points.
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Elsewhere, the sunny and sophisticated feel of songs such as ‘You Amaze Me’ and ‘Your Ghost’ ensures they stand out, while the jazzier ‘I Want You’ demonstrates exactly why she would have been so well received at Ronnie Scott’s. It threatens to go off the boil a little in the middle – another supreme vocal saves the rather plodding ‘Dreams’ while a little more righteous anger and a tad less resignation would have served ‘You Were Loved’ well – but a strong finish is in reserve courtesy of tense ‘The Day That Stephanie Jumped’ and the lovely, haunting ‘Lifeline’ which could well be the best track here.
While it’s good to know Rosie Wilby has since gone on to attain success in comedy, the songs here suggest she shouldn’t completely desert her music either. Over a decade on from its original release, ‘Precious Hours’ remains an intelligent, emotional and quite frequently inspired pop album which has suffered little damage from the passage of time.
Rosie Wilby online
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