Lady Sovereign’s Jigsaw Is Missing Some Pieces

Jigsaw is the first for Lady Sovereign’s Midget record label, and I’ve been excited to hear what an unbridled SOV sounds like. I was a fan of her debut, Public Warning, despite its amateurish detours at times, and was eager to see some evolution. She’s making the press rounds now, telling anyone who’ll listen how excited she is to able to do a little more experimenting. “My label, my way… I run my own shit now,” the artist formerly known as Louise Amanda Harman declared. “That should be interesting.”

Really, though, for all she talks about Jigsaw being a collection of very different tracks, it seems that there’s at least one common theme throughout- quality. As in, a lack thereof. In other words, this album is really fucking bad. How bad? Well, I can pretty much guarantee that it’s the last you’ll hear of Lady Sovereign.

Jigsaw is a pint-sized album, much like the spunky UK grime munchkin herself, clocking in at just under 37 minutes. We should be thankful. The first version we got led off with Food Play, getting things off to a terrible start. It’s a song so unbelievably fucking annoying that I can barely make it to the first proper verse, which finds the little hoodrat trying out a Lil’ Kim sex delivery- and failing. It doesn’t fit at all. In fact, I feel like I should be wearing a condom listening to this shit- it feels venereal. Munching twiglets like piglets? What the fuck? This isn’t the spitfire SOV I remember. Not at all.

I Got You Dancing, the first single off Jigsaw, is certainly among the most listenable, despite sounding like M.I.A. on a blip kick. It’s catchy, but it’s no Love Me Or Hate Me. In fact, So Human is the closest she’ll get to the exposure/acceptance of her breakout single; it’s a half-cover of the Cure’s Close To Me, and a clever (if whorishly cheap) way to hook listeners. It’s not that it’s bad, it just suffers from the same problem the rest of the album does- it’s simply not very good.

And now I’ve lost a third of an hour listening to old Cure songs. What does that tell you? I don’t care much for the Cure, but I’d rather listen to anything by those sad clowns than anything off Jigsaw. Christ, this album sucks.

Jigsaw
April 7, 2009
Midget / EMI

1. Let’s Be Mates
2. So Human
3. Jigsaw
4. Bang Bang
5. I Got You Dancing
6. Pennies
7. Guitar
8. Student Union
9. Food Play
10. I Got The Goods