This new Sally Shapiro album is really growing on me. When I first heard the single "I'll Be By Your Side", I was suspicious. It was like someone had taken all my theorisings of the sort of pop music I like - melancholy, shimmery, lyrical content that suggests life melting into tears if it were to be taken by itself, but uplifts and becomes sublime when taken with the magic of pop - and then made a song by recipe, conforming to my formula. It's an eerie feeling: it's like I made this music by my own wishes...

In any case. It's a beguiling album, sung by the most fragile of singers to nostalgic-futuristic Italo Disco atmospherics. Sally Shapiro (an alias, apparently) puts you in mind of the wistful Annie of "No Easy Love". The synthesizers and big snares put you in mind of the overwrought soundtrack to a 1980s film - one watched on VHS tape with terrible picture quality, so that all the sound wavers. It makes me think of back alleys at night - cold, empty city streets, cars sailing past.

There are some great stories going around about the recording of the album, also. From Pitchfork:

The legend is, Swedish producer Johan Agebjörn had to coax little Sally Shapiro out of her self-conscious shell to record "I'll Be by Your Side"-- and once he did, she wouldn't sing while he was in the room.

How good is that??!! Anyway. First defining album for my 2007: Disco Romance.

I know you're my love
Even though
Sometimes
I Believe
I will wake up
From this dream

( - "I Know")