This Is Acting

Somehow, though, broad strokes suit these songs; Sia's unabashed aim is uplift and her fell for sing-along-until-your neighbor-bangs-on-the-radiator hooks rarely falter. [29 Jan/5 Feb 2016, p.107]

When she strains so hard on ‘Alive’ that her voice becomes pretty ragged, it’s thrilling. If you can buy into its concept, Sia’s play-acting is very entertaining indeed.

It’s a brave act on Furler’s part, to stand up and present a body of work that so many other people deemed not good enough, but ultimately, it’s a great collection of pop songs, cynical or not.

Thanks to the remarkable instrument that is Furler's voice: huge but fragile, fearlessly ragged and wild, seemingly a conduit of a tumultuous past that has included drug addiction and mental health issues, it perfectly counterpoints her songs' robust construction in a way that makes you wish she kept every song she wrote for herself.

Every track is a potential hit, and Sia’s use of pure pop hooks, coupled with an astounding control over her rampant voice, makes this a very good record.

Given that Furler didn't originally plan to make these songs her own, it's impressive that This Is Acting works as well as it does--only the wannabe banger "Move Your Body" and "Sweet Design"'s flashy, hard-hitting R&B are truly unconvincing. For the most part, however, This Is Acting's meta-pop is another example of how cleverly Sia brings her her experiments into the mainstream.

While Sia has declared her awareness of the cheese factor in her hired-gun material, with its broad themes of self-empowerment and survival, she has a real gift for making it palatable.

Some of the tracks, like the first few ballads, feel a tad exhausted and perhaps a little clichéd, but that's the nature of Sia's universal, inclusive pop music, and on This is Acting, she approaches it in an intriguing way and performs it with gusto.

It's a complete piece of work, and one that serves as a commentary on the intersectionality of art and fame by someone who has recently acquired a new level of notoriety. But the sacrifice here is the personal flair that gave her previous album a spark of creativity and set it apart from the songs she had already been writing for other pop stars.

Whether we like her or not, Sia might be authoring the most iconic pop music of our generation. For this reason alone, This is Acting is worth at least one listen.