Noush Skaugen, Palomino

So I pick up the case for Palomino; Noush (pronounced New-shh) Skaugen’s first release, and on the front cover is a cute, naked girl posing with a guitar covering her goods. Nice. Open it up, and you get more pictures of Noush, and she looks pretty damn good. The packaging looks great, well-produced photos, and one of those cutesy discs that are made to appear like a record. Aw, shucks, but when you see all this flash associated with a first release from an obscure artist, well, you can be damn sure it ain’t Scottish. But is it crap?

She won 2007 Alternative Pop Artist of the year with Palomino, so someone must like it. I, however, don’t think the disc stands on its own, and from the effort put into the packaging, someone else thinks it doesn’t, either. She’s hot, and that usually sells, but not so much with music (thank God). Apparently she’s showing up on shows such as CSI, Passions, and Entourage, now, and it’s no surprise – many TV audiences will put up with anything if the players look good.

So, other than the nice packaging, what do you get with this disc? Five tracks and a video. Track 1, “Gone,” is about a lover that is leaving — he’s “washed away,” she’s “holding on,” and “so lonely,” etc.; you get the idea. From the uptempo beat, you’d think it was a song about girl power and get some talk of revenge in the end, but you don’t. Not a good opener.

“Skid” is on the disc three times; a studio version (track 2), live solo acoustic version (track 5), and a video of track 5. The title is interesting, and I get a little excited about something that could be quirky, but instead I get melodramatic prose about someone else Noush is “in deep” with, and she wants them to “love, live, lie with you next to me,” and — oh, yeah — “breathing right down my neck.” So what about this title? Wait for it: “if I fall and I skid, but I would have lived.” Moving on…

…from the song whose title makes me think of bloody knees, to track 3, “5 Weeks Away.” It starts off like a serious attempt to channel 10,000 Maniacs, and there are few occasions when Noush sounds just like Natalie Merchant, but as a whole she struggles with the vocals across all tracks. This particular song is again about a relationship, and I get the feeling Noush likes singing about herself. She is “1400 miles away from you” and has “faith in yesterday,” and there is more breathing again, with “breathing over me.”

Cripes, it’s starting to get tough getting through this, and then there comes a break with some record scratching and a “rock the beat” sample, so out of place in the song that I had to back up and listen to the section a couple of more times to believe it. My eyes are starting to hurt from rolling them.

“Beautiful Lies,” track 4, is a buried gem. A rough gem, for sure, but a song that shows that Noush has some songwriting potential and a bit of melody. Of course, she is again singing about herself, and someone who apparently lied to her about how they “must go,” and has her “hypnotized with [their] beautiful lies.” Did I say it was rough? It’s hard to forget the past that we had to sled through to get to this point, and unfortunately, the best I can say is that I’d like to hear it sung by someone else, with a few tweaks to the lyrics.

As mentioned, the video is the same live song you get with track 5. Why include a video of the same live track? Oh, yeah, that’s right — she’s hot. But the video is laughable — first off you get a flash of the title of the CD, Palomino, with a voiceover by that deep raspy voice that’s in all the movie promotions; I’m not kidding. Then you get to see Noush sitting there looking good. You won’t make it through the whole song, but if you stick it out, you’ll see why all her songs include a lot of “me,” “I,” etc. — she truly loves herself.

I’d say to avoid this one, but everyone has to start somewhere. From the bits I’ve heard, Noush’s new album is nothing like Palomino; whether it’s good or not is a subject for another review, but interestingly, she has much more of an accent now. Let’s hope it’s Scottish.