Photo: Artwork
This Is Acting isn't just an album title. It's a statement - a warning of sorts, put so plainly and so directly that it's easy to miss. Don't expect personal revelations, Sia reminds the listener, because there's very little of me here.
"I'm calling it This Is Acting because they are songs I was writing for other people," Sia - whose reluctance to show her face on camera has proved it's got staying power beyond just one album campaign - told NME last year, "so I didn't go in thinking, 'This is something I would say'. It's more like play-acting. It's fun."
The real Sia isn't some carefully guarded secret, of course - in fact, she goes about the whole secrecy thing with a great deal of candour - it's just that she's not interested in baring her own soul. The album isn't an outpouring of inner turmoil or an articulation of some deeply felt emotion - or if it is, it probably isn't Sia's.
That's not to say the songs are all surface - far from it. There's a dark vulnerability in 'Reaper' which is thrown strangely off-kilter by the jaunty, major-key melody, while 'Alive' feels like some desperate articulation of existence, the cracks in her voice forcing an edge of doubt into the insistent refrain.
There's something about Sia's music that feels as though she (or whatever part she happens to be playing) is constantly grasping for something just out of reach - for emotions she can't quite articulate, cliched tropes with which she doesn't connect ("Gotta paint my nails, put my high heels on," she sings on 'Cheap Thrills', an air of disdain dripping from every note), notes almost out of her range. It makes for a consistently unsettling, always arresting, listen.
In a few instances, she's playing a part I wish she wouldn't. On 'Sweet Design', for example, she sings underneath a glitchy '90s disco instrumental, "News travels fast when you've got an ass like mine." And on 'Move Your Body', she seems to hearken back to the soul-destroying EDM drop that nearly ruined her David Guetta collaboration 'Titanium'.
For the most part though, she plays her part well. Stand by for the curtain call.
This Is Acting is out on 29 January.
