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.

While Sia’s lines wear a badge of effortlessness, her ripe voice lends gravitas to these “victim to victory” ballads (as the notoriously media-shy singer characterized them to the New York Times in a rare sit-down).

One can't shake the feeling that This Is Acting was compromised from the start. [Mar 2016, p.114]

This is Acting has some good tracks on it and is obviously written by a very talented songwriter, it’s just not an album that demands excitement from its listeners.

It could never be accused of lacking honesty, commitment or power--some achievement given the songs were not all for her--but at times you long for Sia just to take a step back, to bring a little bit of that Zero 7 calm back into the equation.

This Is Acting, for all its backstory, rousing highlights, and questionable stylistic choices, actually feels like more of a placeholder than it was probably intended to be, continuing on the radio-ready success of 1000 Forms of Fear but doing very little to push her craft forward outside of exciting productions like “Move Your Body” and emotional breakthroughs like “Space Between”.

Very little of her pop is dull, even when she is trying to write for lowest common denominator mass appeal. The best tune here by some distance is the maddest.

It’s a pity there are some disappointing songs here because elsewhere on the record there is real brilliance.

Where her other albums are more varied, this all-guns-blazing pop portfolio is a touch wearying. [Mar 2016, p.80]

Too often This is Acting is steeped in unimaginative cliche, and leans too heavily on familiar pop tropes in a way that her previous solo albums did not.

Despite a few highlights, This Is Acting is scattered and forgettable next to the emotional 1000 Forms of Fear.

In isolation, almost everything here would be a solid example of the songwriter-for-hire’s art: if nothing bowls you over with its originality, it’s hard not to be impressed by the pitilessness with which the songs sink their hooks into you. But taken collectively, you notice the big flaw in Furler’s approach.

She manages to cut through generic themes to inject darker predilections with hard-sung vocals that sound downright masochistic at times.

Sometimes these outtakes feel like, well, outtakes.... Impressively, though, for an album that's more about utilitarian versatility than making the songs her own, Sia's personality often comes through.

Sia deserves credit for so easily slipping into the personas of her muses, but “Sweet Design,” which harks back to the go-go sound of Beyoncé's B'Day, and “Move Your Body,” whose unabashed 4/4 beat and clattering EDM percussion are straight out of Rihanna's Loud, seem more like dated outtakes than underappreciated gems.

Despite being so joyously engulfed by Sia’s voice, the songs come over as dispossessed orphans, all a variation on that same theme of being lost and held down by overbearing powers and temptations.

There are only so many times you can key into someone’s heart before they change the code, and after about 20 listens, the veneer crumbles a bit, and it’s a little too easy to see the gears turning underneath. But that’s not the most frustrating thing about the record; the most frustrating thing is that Sia has so much access to us and just doesn’t do much with it.

In almost every way This Is Acting feels safer and more ordinary than “1000 Forms of Fear,” with familiar (if sturdy) melodies and lyrical clichés about houses on fire and footprints in the sand.

Even as she and her producers flaunt their layered vocals and whiz-bang sound effects, there are already so many of Sia’s midtempo victim-to-victory anthems around that they offer diminishing returns, particularly when listened to as an album.