Eleven Kinds Of Loneliness - review

'Eleven Kinds Of Loneliness' would have been a magnificent title if Tanita 'Laugh And I'll Shoot' Tikaram had any sense of humour and/or irony. But she's so damn serious! After having already recorded three albums by the age of twenty-two, Madam Tikaram should have done the right thing (thinking 'have a life!') and gone on a holiday for some years (Club Escolette?) but instead the poor thing immediately went back to the studio. She wrote the twelve songs for 'Eleven Kinds Of Loneliness' between December 1990 and January 1991 when she was getting ready for the 'Everybody's Angel' tour.

The disc was recorded in the Wool Hall Studios in Bath and it's the first to be produced by Aunt Tikaram herself. In the old days Tanita regularly used background vocalists and instrumentalists but for this album she sat alone with her guitar and only few instrumentalists in the studio. Except for the orchestral single 'You Make The Whole World Cry' the songs sound shabby and that's why it is now really striking how lethargically her songs are and how whining her voice sounds. It is also hardly surprising that her lyrics still haven't outgrown the level of high school poetry. 'Ancient Heart', 'The Sweet Keeper' and 'Everybody's Angel' all sounded like copies of each other and in spite of the before mentioned shift in emphasis 'Eleven Kinds Of Loneliness' is again, like the two previous albums, less good than its predecessor.