Sia

On her last album, Colour the Small One, Australian singing sensation Sia Furler took many a Six Feet Under fan's breath away with her beautiful ballad "Breathe Me." But while the remainder of Small One wasn't bad, it was ultimately overshadowed by the single's unstoppable intensity.

For her much-anticipated follow-up, Some People Have Real Problems, Sia sticks to her core sound—sweet R&B-inspired numbers that foreground her larger-than life voice—while delivering a much stronger sum package. After a pair of solid but unremarkable cuts, the album settles into a rhythm with the slow and steady "Day Too Soon," one of the best songs on the record, and a testament to the raw, unbridled power that is Furler's voice.

The following track, "You Have Been Loved," is a piano-powered tearjerker that sounds vaguely like a mash-up of The Beatles' "In My Life" and Radiohead's "No Surprises" as sung by Alicia Keys, while "Academia" sees Sia collaborating with hipster icon Beck on the quirkiest cut on the album, which likens lovers to binary code and cryptic crosswords. On "Death By Chocolate," Furler puts her pipes to good use once again as she goes the doo-wop route, reassuring broken-hearted lovers everywhere that they will love again. "Soon We'll Be Found," however, might be Real Problems' crowning achievement: As the lyrics capture the all too familiar dialogue of lovers' quarrels ("Let's not fight / I'm tired, can't we just sleep tonight"), Furler goes nearly hoarse with emotion.

On the dynamic "Electric Bird," the sound of birds is replaced with a surging collection of horns, while the haunting "Beautiful Calm Driving" offers a delicate chorus of well-orchestrated string instruments. On the closing track, "Lullaby," Furler romances listeners with nothing but her softly crooning voice, a piano, and some strategically-placed xylophone notes. While Real Problems may not have a cut as sweeping as "Breathe Me," it does have an impressive range in its own right.

—Elisa Jacobs
01.09.08

Some People Have Real Problems is Sia's first release on the Starbucks-affiliated Hear Music label, following acts like Paul McCartney and Joni Mitchell. Given the burst of attention Sia got when her song "Breathe Me" was used to excellent effect in the final scenes of the series finale of the HBO show Six Feet Under, which brought the Australian singer/songwriter to a much wider audience than was familiar with her earlier work with Zero 7 and Massive Attack, it makes perfect sense. With her old-school soul vocal style, with just a hint of roughness under her delicate high-register tones, set against the contemporary sophistication of her music, Sia is exactly the sort of artist a middle-aged Starbucks devotee who wants to remain at least tangentially hip would flock to: if Amy Winehouse did yoga instead of Jack Daniels, she'd sound a lot like Sia. But fans of Sia's earlier releases may well be in for a shock: Some People Have Real Problems sounds like a concerted grab for the Mum Rock demographic, those looking for something to listen to while they're waiting for Corinne Bailey Rae and Regina Spektor to release new albums. Considerably more pop-oriented and uptempo than the chilly electronica that made her name, songs like "Buttons" and "Academia" (one of two songs featuring Beck on harmony vocals; the other, "Death by Chocolate," also features fellow Scientologists Jason Lee and Giovanni Ribisi) also seem designed to attract the audience that fell for Feist's "1234." It would be easy to condemn Sia for such a naked brass ring grab (remember the hubbub over Liz Phair's self-titled album?) except for one somewhat surprising point: the change actually suits her. The newly varied arrangements, moods, and textures of this album, from the mournful piano-led cover of the Kinks' "I Go to Sleep" through the horn-based R&B swing of "Electric Bird" to the sarcastic bounce of "The Girl You Lost to Cocaine," make Some People Have Real Problems Sia's most engrossing and satisfying album yet. ~ Stewart Mason, All Music Guide