Athena “Pretty Things” single review

4 stars (out of 5)

0

The first time I popped this new offering from Anglo-Greek Athena Andreadis into my stereo I was immediately confused and thought I’d left my copy of ‘Finally Woken’ by Jem in the stereo by mistake.

The opening few seconds are so entirely similar to the opening of ‘They’ by Jem I was quite surprised. While the melody to ‘They’ is of course already a lift itself, it was still enough to perplex me.

Anyway, that minor gripe aside I genuinely did come to enjoy ‘Pretty Things’. It feels like the perfect kind of song to come home from a busy day and crack open a bottle of wine to – more than that, it feels like a genuinely great summer song. [kml_flashembed movie=”http://uk.youtube.com/v/d3rnKmXAM2A” width=”425″ height=”350″ wmode=”transparent” /]

It perfectly captures that wistful, content and flowing feel of a lazy summer evening on the grass. Listening to the song through a few times I found different things to enjoy each time, be it the catchy plodding melody or Andreadis’ multi-layered voice that really catches the ear the first time around. The three and half minutes this song occupies flow past so effortlessly that this almost proves it’s downfall; it proved hard for me to recall much of the song only a few hours later.

Athena has been gathering a fair amount of underground buzz in the right circles lately. Whilst I enjoy her voice, in all honesty this same song could have been written by any of the Jem’s, Martha Wainwrights or even Didos of the pop world. This is not a bad song by any measure and perhaps it works even better in the context of an album, I just can’t shake the feeling that Athena is one of many solo female artists struggling to move out the aforementioned shadows that just doesn’t have enough uniqueness to ultimately succeed.

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