Killing My Darlings

Album Review

Amanda Jenssen's MySpace page lists her music under the genre tag "melodramatic popular song," and as the album title indicates, they ain't kiddin'. Although she was a runner-up on Sweden's version of the televised singing competition Pop Idol, Killing My Darlings is much less Jordin Sparks and Carrie Underwood than it is Dusty Springfield and Petula Clark. Like her U.K. counterparts Amy Winehouse or Duffy, Jenssen has a big, brassy voice with a sweet soul edge, and the production on Killing My Darlings has a similar Ready, Steady, Go! vibe, with full orchestras going toe to toe with a prominent rhythm section. The difference here is that Jenssen doesn't have the outsize persona that at its best invests Winehouse's Back to Black with its drama and intensity, although the trade-off is that it seems unlikely that Jenssen's personal life is going to so quickly spiral tragically out of control as Winehouse's apparently has. As a result, Killing My Darlings remains little more than a fine collection of skillful, tuneful pop songs, from the soaring, gloriously optimistic opener "For the Sun" to the brief, haunting piano ballad "Our Last Goodbye" that closes the album. The one misstep, in fact, is the first single "Do You Love Me," a somewhat overwrought, drum-machine powered groove that aims too hard for the mainstream Top 40 and sounds simply out of place in the kicky mod context of the rest of the album. Otherwise, Killing My Darlings is a fine addition to the retro '60s pop-soul sweepstakes of 2008.