Cat Burns finds 'How to Be Human' but maybe not her own sound

25 year old South Londoner and current Celebrity Traitors contestant Cat Burns is a charming performer. Her songs have a rare ability to present the most fundamental of youthful relationship ups and downs as fresh and real.

They also make more modern expressions of hope and solidarity around sexuality and neurodivergence escape the twee, flowery framing of live-laugh-love Mum’s-on-Facebook-again posting.

Maybe most important of all, sings in her own accent with her own mannerisms, with a rich tone. All of which makes me want to like her second album more than I do. Not to say that it’s bad: it’s not, it’s fine. There’s nothing to set your teeth on edge here, that’s for sure, but it’s just really heavily over-engineered to make sure that’s the case. The production and arrangements in particular feel like a catalogue of industry defaults from over the past three decades.

There’s that kind of post-trip hop shuffle that became omnipresent from the late 90s via Dido, Morcheeba and co. There’s a little bit of the earnest soul-ish balladeering that the likes of James Morrison got huge with in the 00s. There’s a lot of the sort of retooled Eighties, Fleetwood Mac-y off-the-peg soft rock cool that Tame Impala and Jessie Ware pioneered and Harry Styles took stratospheric. And there’s just a whiff of the plinky-plonk smoothed out Afrobeats which Ed Sheeran has so successfully milked.

Unlike Sheeran, though, who disappears like a cypher behind his focus-grouped signifiers and brutally efficient hooks, Burns does still feel present in among all this. That voice and abundant charm do still shine through. There are lovely songs here too. The insistent drum-machine chug of “Can Time Move Faster” drives it along in a cute parallel to the lyrical theme, amplifying the delightful pop quirks of the writing, for example.

The easy listening flourishes of the single "Lavender" almost sound like Saint Etienne. And you’d have to be a hard-hearted bastard to dislike the straightforward acoustic guitar and strings ballad “I Hope It’s Me”. But these are the ones that break out of the studio straitjacket of those modern MOR formulas, and that’s all too rare here. Burns is a distinctive artist, and she may well reach great success with this stuff, but it feels like there's something that's far more her waiting to get out.

• More New Music reviews on theartsdesk.com
• Help save theartsdesk.com

@joemuggs.bsky.social

Listen to "Lavender":