Melanie C: Northern Star : Music Reviews : Rolling Stone

Album Reviews

How do you court an audience of adults when your fan base is their five-year-old children? This is the demographic quandary facing the solo Spices. Melanie "Sporty" Chisholm solves it by switching stylistic teams for nearly every track on her first outing away from the Girls. Created with Madonna collaborators William Orbit and Rick Nowels, Rick Rubin, Natalie Imbruglia's Phil Thornalley, TLC's Left Eye, Beck sidemen, ex-Sex Pistol Steve Jones and Spice studio pros, Northern Star includes Madonna-esque symphonic ballads ("Feel the Sun"), Beatle-ish power pop ("Suddenly Monday"), Garbage-y dance rock ("Ga Ga") and way more well-sung goodies than you prefab-pop haters might expect. Although the weakest cuts recall Spice slowies ("If That Were Me," a street-people tribute that includes the regrettable rhyme "I couldn't live without my phone/But you don't even have a home"), the distorto-punk first single, "Goin' Down," more than compensates with a butt-kickin' Low-era Bowie homage. Give it up for Gifted Spice. (RS 825)

BARRY WALTERS