Sarah Nixey made her sudden, necessary show business entrance as one third of the darkly glamorous pop group Black Box Recorder. She was in the severe, dreamy centre, singing scheming songs that were deadly serious about trivia, and deeply frivolous about important matters. She sang the songs as if they were bruised lullabies, as if she was soothing the 20th Century to sleep. Once asleep, its dreams would become the 21st Century.
Sarah is now, in the 21st Century, solo... Her flash, exotically electric songs are like manifestos proclaiming that she’s as committed to the idea of pop as a far out fantasy, as hallucinated pleasure, as she had been in Black Box Recorder, but this time the surreal edge, the emotional pressure, the deviant intensity, is all her own. She is now 21st Century solo.
She sings smart, stinging pop songs. They tell heady, half-crazed stories about minds and bodies, memories and illusions, desperation and passion.
Sarah sings, talks, whispers and sighs moody, mesmerising nightlife city centre songs and tender beat ballads about things she has remembered and things she will one day remember.
Sarah has a still, certain and dangerously captivating voice that could sing torch songs in the 50s, Bond songs in the 60s, underground disco in the New York 70s, New Pop in the 80s and avant Britpop in the 90s. She now, solo in the 21st Century, sings perfect street light lit electro-beat pop that has an avenging kick in the tale and a killer thrill in the sound. She is the kind of singer that could, in pop heaven, duet with Leonard Cohen, Tim Buckley, Kraftwerk or David Bowie, but for now, Nixey's on her own, checking her diary, double checking her thoughts, finding her own way round the mysterious streets that take you from inside your mind to inside the disco. And, once the night is over and the light takes over, beyond.
by Paul Morley.
