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| Pitchfork |
 If we categorized albums in the same way as movies and books, Rose Elinor Dougall's debut, Without Why, would be filed under "romance." All of the songs are focused on love and relationships; the arrangements are wistful, melodramatic, and lovelorn. Her voice, elegant and disarming in its directness, conveys a gentle heartbreak even when she's singing about being in love. The sound is sweeping and slick, but also springy and sharp, a contrast similar to early-90s recordings by Morrissey and the Sundays. Even the darkest moments of the album sound like a girly fantasy.Dougall has come a long way since her tenure as a singer in what can now be considered the classic line-up of the Pipettes. She had a few songwriting credits while in that band-- most notably the singles "Judy" and "Dirty Mind"-- but here she's developed into a mature talent with a knack for melancholy balladry. Though she has entirely abandoned the girl-group conceit of her previous group, there's a thematic and stylistic continuity between those old songs and the music with her new backing band, the Distractions, on Without Why. Basically, it sounds like she's grown up a bit. Dougall has moved away from the playful, sassy tone of the Pipettes, and embraced a deeper, more earnest approach to thinking about relationships, appropriate for someone entering her mid-twenties. Whereas she previously sang songs mainly about infatuation and the politics of casual dating, she's dealing with stronger, more complicated feelings now. Even the most assured songs, like the joyful "Fallen Over", grapple with some degree of ambivalence and insecurity. In "Find Me Out", she's desperately afraid that her partner will discover she's not good enough; "Another Version of Pop Song" has her warning a suitor, "Please don't say that it's forever, or that we belong together/ It's all I really know for now." As much as the songs evoke the butterflies-in-the-stomach feeling of cinematic romance, there's a stubborn insistence on dealing with love as realistically as possible. It's like young adult fiction with the anxious soul of droll British comedy....full text |
| Bbc |
| Pop music comes in many and varied forms, but sometimes it’s just whatever makes you crackle. Such is the lesson Rose Elinor Dougall took from her split with The Pipettes, the all-female Brighton troupe with which the 24-year-old songstress made her name. The group made polka-dotted 50s pastiche their stock-in-trade, adhering to a strict pop formula which made them fun for a while but a kitsch-laden drag in the long run. Perhaps sensing a best-before date drawing close, Dougall bowed out from the band in 2008 with ambitions towards launching a solo career. Two years later and she’s tipped her hand with Without Why, a debut which has felt a long time in coming in spite of the not-insubstantial amounts of hype which have preceded its release. As a re-examination of what it means to be a pop writer, however, you’d have to say it’s been worth the wait. An adult-oriented record of a very organic sort, Without Why is free of the crass signifiers that moniker sometimes brings to mind. That nothing on here lingers long beyond the four-minute mark signals an overall pop-ness of intent. Likewise Lee Baker’s production, which is as clear as a bell and sympathetic to a tee. But it’s also a more complex beast than that, drawing on Brit-folk greats like Sandy Denny and the chiming grace of Felt songwriter Lawrence Hayward for its ambitious blueprint....full text |
| Thequietus |
| Rose Elinor Dougall's debut album Without Why can hardly be treated as a response to the thriving endeavours of The Pipettes, the polka dot outfit in which we originally encountered her. Work began on it over two years ago, and several of its missives have already made their way into the public domain in that time where, pleasingly, they've been devoured with an anticipatory relish. Nevertheless, there is a sense in which it feels like a reaction to audience perceptions and a considered toying with expectations, many of which are based on songs and performances from her teens, surely something few would want as a trapped-in-amber impression. Ironically, though, Rose can't entirely shake her pop instincts, nor her knack for idly flicking past the most treasured sections of the indie-est of record collections, and, consequently, she's produced an even stronger solo debut than she may even have intended. Inevitably, the vocals are unfailingly inviting from the off, melodically effortlessly gymnastic, tonally somewhat confiding, and wrapped in a moreish sweetness whose solid humanism keeps it from ever tipping towards cloying affectation. They therefore lend themselves well to an album that, a little unusually for someone in their early twenties, is reflective in the sort of thoroughly observed manner that even the Delgados didn't entirely nail until the third album. The lovely music-box reverie 'May Holiday', for example, is both photographically detailed and undercurrent-heavy as it brings a profound air of perspective to bear on what her experiences meant both at the time and subsequently. 'Fallen Over' and 'Third Attempt', while radically diferent sonically (the former's a puzzled Britpop rush, the latter a more stately slice of explicit melancholy – precisely the trick Lush pulled with the dual release of 'Hypocrite' and 'Desire Lines'), are terrific pick-yourself-up tales of resilient hesitancy....full text |
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