FEATURE:
Second Spin
Sia - Colour the Small One
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ON 12th February (its planned release date)…
we will get Music – Songs from and Inspired by the Motion Picture from Australian artist, Sia. I think she is releasing this as a studio album rather than a soundtrack album, so it will be interesting to see what comes out and hear what the album sounds like. Songs like Together, and Hey Boy sound pretty good, so there are high hopes that the album will be similarly strong! For this Second Spin, I want to go back to 2004 and Sia’s third studio album, Colour the Small One. Released in the U.K. and Australia on 19th January, I wanted to look back on the album after seventeen years. There are a couple of reasons why I want to look at the album. In fact, some of her best tracks are on this album – including Breathe Me, and Where I Belong. Colour the Small One is an album that got some positive reviews, but most of them were quite mixed. I really like it and feel that it deserves greater acclaim. With production was by Jimmy Hogarth, who also co-wrote three tracks and provided various instruments, Colour the Small One is a fantastic album with some amazing songs. Maybe there is a bit more filler towards the end of the album, but it opens incredibly strong with Rewrite, Sunday, and Breathe Me; the middle is bolstered by Don’t Bring Me Down, whereas Where I Belong ends things with a real spark.
It is a shame that the singles from Colour the Small One did not do terribly well in the U.K. charts because, when you listen to them now, they sound great – and I think they would fare better in the modern charts. I have always been a fan of Sia and, whilst one or two of her albums pass me by, I think that Colour the Small One warrants more praise and consideration. In terms of her most-celebrated album, I guess that honour goes to 2010’s We Are Born. I think, in some ways, Sia was finding her voice and growing as an artist. That is not to say that her third album is quite light and merely promising. In fact, I think that Colour the Small One is an album that unfurls and blossoms the more you listen to it. In a mixed review, this is what The Guardian wrote in 2004:
“Sia Kate Isobelle Furler's lengthy full name inevitably calls Dido to mind - so it's scant surprise to find that she practises a similar strain of nice-girl blood-letting. In fact, Sia's first hit (a one-off top 10 in 2000) preceded Dido's debut, so it's anyone's guess why she's not the one breathily counting her dosh at the top of the charts.
At her most ruminative, you would never even know she's Australian (her father played in Men at Work). Sia was originally launched as an R&B turn, but this album, her second, sets things straight: she is a wispy romantic with jazzy affinities and a heroic lisp. Once past the opening clutch of small, grasping ballads, which all the electro-spaciness at the producer's disposal can't make cool, Colour the Small One unfurls into an unexpectedly endearing thing.
Her melodramatic premise, that love will kill you if you let it, receives elegiac treatment on The Church of What's Happening Now, and a jazzed-up spaciousness on Where I Belong. This could be the soundtrack to some of the new year's mopiest moments”.
I will end things soon, but I am saving a positive review that is much more considerate and closer to the truth than reviews that are shorter and have been a little dismissive or vague. Pop Matters tackled Colour the Small One in 2006:
“Sia's first album Healing is Difficult is an album that falls closer to slightly skewed R&B than any other genre, but Colour the Small One is likely to appeal more to those fans of her work with the UK purveyors of downtempo in Zero 7. Colour the Small One is an incredibly "internal" album, one where we feel as though we're hearing the stream of Sia's consciousness, listening to her thoughts as much as we are hearing her words. "And I'm addicted to the joy that the little things / Those little things / The little things they bring," she sings in the cinematic, string-enhanced "Don't Bring Me Down", coming off something like Natalie Imbruglia as heard from inside the womb, all poppy chord changes and slow builds in a soupy, near-whispered haze. "You've drawn me into your world / Now I too spin, limbless," she sings in “Moon”, whispering a striking, almost violent concession of loving submission to an unnamed lover. That sense of loss of control, more contemplated than acted upon, is the essence of what Colour the Small One exemplifies most consistently.
Of course, such a loss of control is understandable given the inspiration for much of Sia's music. She has mentioned that her first album was a direct reaction to the tragic death of her lover, but much of that album feels detached, as if Sia was purposefully avoiding the sorrow that comes with such catastrophe. Colour the Small One is the confrontation, as Sia continually talks herself through her darker thoughts: "Give yourself a break / Let your imagination run away" is her advice in the faux-chipper "Sunday", yet by the next song (the aforementioned "Breathe Me"), she's back to sentiment more in line with mourning, singing "I think that I might break / I've lost myself again and I feel unsafe". Hers is a psyche on the edge, simultaneously disturbing and beautiful. It all makes the payoff at the end that much more satisfying, as "The Church of What's Happening Now" brings Sia's focus to the present, while the upbeat, out-of-character "Where I Belong" keeps one eye on a brighter future while giving some closure to the past, ultimately closing on the line "There's a place here for you with me".
So it goes. Colour the Small One has all of the attributes of a Hollywood movie in which the protagonist and the foil both happen to be the same person. There's conflict, there's high drama, there's tragedy, and there's a happy ending. There's even a subplot added for character development in which our heroine deals with a less-than-flattering portrait of the person she once was ("Bully", co-written with Beck in sad sack Sea Change mode).
And, as an added bonus, America gets the expanded DVD edition of said movie, complete with deleted scenes (lovely UK B-Sides "Broken Biscuit" and "Sea Shells") and alternate takes (two remixes of "Breathe Me"), all of it filling up over 70 minutes of the CD on which it is housed.
That's 70 minutes to savor, to let the words run through you, to let the melodies wrap around you. 70 minutes to treasure, for that's what Colour the Small One is, a treasure chest unlocked, a tin foil ball of emotion unwrapped for all to see, finally noticed two long years after its announced presence. So notice it”.
If you have some time, go and investigate a great album from a wonderful artist. Even though Colour the Small One is not my favourite albums from Sia, I do think it is the most underrated. Maybe critics felt that the album was a bit heavy and full-on, but I think that the honesty and emotion you get from Colour the Small One is thought-provoking; you are invested in what Sia is saying and I think everyone can find a lot to like on the album. If you have skimmed Colour the Small One or sort of left it aside in the past, then I would recommend that you find some time and give this album…
ANOTHER go.