More of your questions answeredTue 11th Nov, 2008Here are some more of Dido's answers to the questions which you've been emailing to askdido@didomusic.com (keep 'em coming!).Hola Dido!! When I listen for the first time your song, Look No Further, remind me the old films with Humphry Bogart or Audrey Hepburn. Did you do it on purpose?Miri From SpainDido replies: It was a bit of an accident of how the strings came out on the day. A combination of microphones, the brilliant Jon Brion arrangement and the way they were playing. Not intentional but yes, I hear it too! I love that about it.What is your favorite brand and kind of chocolate?Lots of Love,SarahDido replies: Twix, or Green and Blacks mint (but kept in the freezer), or a Cadbury's whole nut.Why did not you clean your shoes after leaving the beach?RubenDido replies: Because my mum told me not to.
Hear the new album now!Wed 12th Nov, 2008With the release of Dido's new album, Safe Trip Home, now just days away, you can finally check out what all the fuss is about by listening to the entire thing, for free, online, thanks to a world premiere of the record on iLike.http://www.ilike.com/artist/Dido/album/Safe+Trip+Home
Dido Safe Trip Home RCA, £12.99 The biggest selling British female artist in the world today, Dido is often dismissed for making unobtrusive dinner-party music, which really does her an injustice. Her musical palette may embrace the soft sounds of ambient electronics and the flowing melodiousness of folk, but she has a real gift for conveying simple, emotional truth with deceptively artful songs and the touching purity of her gentle, aching vocals.Only her third album in nine years, Safe Trip Home somehow distils the essence of Dido even further. On first acquaintance, it is almost sombre, such is the understatement of her arrangements. She has reined back on the electronics, with more real instrumentation. Even with a band playing silkily syncopated grooves, often underpinned by lush orchestration, the overall effect is one of quiet stillness.The focus is all on Dido's voice, her languid pacing, her soft tone. She seems to have an intimate relationship with the microphone, never singing louder than is strictly necessary. Yet she has this little lift in her throat, and when her voice rises a quivering octave for just a moment, almost threatening to break, it is enormously affecting.It is an album full of need, whether questioning her own emotional detachment (Don't Believe In Love) or craving the human touch (Burnin' Love). At its core is a kind of positive grief, with a range of songs that embrace the complex emotions of loss, as full of delight in the memory of a loved one as sorrow at their departure. Although not explicitly stated, when you know that much of the album was composed while Dido's father suffered through terminal illness, songs gain added emotional heft. Safe Trip Home is elegiac in the true sense of the word, yet it is not bleak - it is too full of warmth and tenderness for that. Neil McCormick
Dido: New album helped me cope with death of my fatherNov 14 2008 By Rick Fulton DIDO opens her heart in her new album, Safe Trip Home, as she tries to get over the death of her father.The singer has dedicated one of the best tracks, Grafton Street, to her dad William, who died in 2006, aged 68, from chronic autoimmune disease lupus.But the 36-year old insists her third album isn't all downbeat, and neither is she."It wasn't my intention to record a completely sad CD," she said."And that's not me. I go out, I dance, I drink and go crazy to Diana Ross or Slave To The Rhythm by Grace Jones."Safe Trip Home, out on Monday, is Dido's first album since Life For Rent in 2003.It's undeniably introspective, perfect for those going through relationship break-ups or the pain of losing a loved one.There are songs such as The Day Before The Day, with lyrics "No flags will fly, the sun will rise, but we will know that you are gone". It has all the gorgeousness of Abba at their saddest.But the album's most heartbreaking song is Grafton Street, which includes a haunting recorder solo by Dido, the instrument she played at the Guildhall School of Music.She said: "It wasn't easy for me to write this song. If emotions are too fresh and too new, it's not good to put them into a song."But then I was glad that I had the possibility to express it, that I could write this song. My dad was a huge and important part of my life. There wasn't any question his death, which was one of my most far-reaching events of my life, would flow into my music."Maybe I leave myself exposed, but I find it hard to do anything that isn't emotional or doesn't move me in some way."While this album is Dido's most mature and reflective, it also shows off her stunning musicianship. As well as battering out a neat line in indie drums on Quiet Times, she also plays guitar, piano, keyboards, Omnichord, recorder, bells and co-produced the album with Jon Brion, who has helmed Kanye West's Graduation and Keane's song Spiralling.Dido hopes her excitement at being in the studio has rubbed off on the music and, while the album may be intense, she had a great time making it.She said: "It is full of the joy of making music. The process has been a wonderful experience, something to cherish. I've put every emotion into these songs. And now I just really hope they move people."As always with a Dido album, people are moved to buy it. Her debut, No Angel, while ignored on its first release in 1999, sold 12 million copies when rereleased in 2001, after her tune Thank You was sampled by Eminem on his song Stan.She has now sold 22 million physical copies of her first two albums. She admitted that going from nobody to one of the world's biggest stars was a whirlwind."When I got back from touring early in 2005, it took a while just to take in what had happened," she said."I was so unprepared."As far as I was concerned, I was making this little underground record for me to listen to and then, suddenly, eight years later I was getting off this incredible speeding train."I'd had an amazing time, but I guess I needed to take a step back, reconnect with normal life and bring the focus 100 per cent back to music."After meeting Jon Brion at London's Abbey Road studios, she relocated to Los Angeles.There she worked on a number of songs, including Grafton Street, which had started in Brian Eno's studio. Mick Fleetwood later played drums on the track.Dido also took music courses at UCLA and learned about engineering, arranging and mastering.She said: "I wasn't actually a big fan of LA before, but it turned out to be an amazing place to follow through an idea and keep going without anyone saying you're being completely ridiculous."It's a city built on imagination, story-telling and creativity."Plus, everyone seems to go to bed at 9pm, so I'd get a lot done at night."When she came back to London and hooked up again with her brother, Rollo, the Faithless producer who co-wrote and coproduced her first two albums, she decided to use what she'd learned and began recording on her kitchen table using a laptop and a microphone."If you listen closely, you can hear my neighbours drilling or the rain pelting down outside," she said.For Dido, home really is sweet.Safe Trip Home is out on Monday.'It wasn't easy for me to write this song. There wasn't any question that my dad's death would flow into my music'
Tras cinco años alejada de los escenarios regresa Dido. La cantante rompe su silencio con Safe trip home, un disco que ha contado con su armario de la limpiaza como estudio de grabación para algunos temas, ya que "sonaban guay y polvorientas", y que verá la luz el próximo 18 de noviembre.
ARTIST: DIDOALBUM: SAFE TRIP HOME (ARISTA)Dido's haunted voice is a flat line: Whether she's singing bold dismissals like "I can't look at you this morning," or loving declarations like "My heart has found its home," those gauze-covered pipes never modulate. So the sonic settings into which they're placed are all the more important. Her third studio album employs fewer electronic whooshes and more real instruments than the previous two, making it smaller, finer and a better showcase for her uncluttered melodies and lyrics. There are a lot of perfect little songs here; they run less than four minutes, but are rich and deep. "Quiet Times" is a shuffling, string-laden shanty that recalls great Brit folk-pop band the Sundays. "It Comes and It Goes" has an irresistible sway, while "The Day Before the Day" is quietly devastating. There isn't a standout single, but this is Dido's most fully realized and elegantly rendered collection.
By ANN POWERS, Pop Music Critic November 18, 2008 Talking about her new album at a Hollywood rehearsal studio last month, Dido Armstrong used one word more than any other -- 14 times, in fact, over the course of an hour. The word was "emotion." This was a bit surprising, since Dido is pretty much the living picture of musical reserve."I pull emotion into these songs," said the English singer-songwriter, whose third studio album, "Safe Trip Home," will be released today in the U.S. "Sometimes it's my emotions, sometimes it's something I've picked up. But then it becomes yours when you take it on."Dido is contemporary pop's most resolute plain Jane, even more firmly undramatic than her American counterpart, Norah Jones. Her two multi-platinum albums and her sampled vocal on Eminem's 2000 hit "Stan" made her a single-named pop star, but she truly wouldn't cause a stir at the grocery store. She's sensible-ponytail pretty, embodying that pre-feminist term for self-possession, "demureness."Another word Dido often uses is "insular" -- that one describes not her music but herself."I will just say things how they are," she said of her songs, which are considered by admiring fellow songwriters to be models of unfussy introspection. "I always want to bring emotion across in a straightforward way. I don't want to get histrionic when I'm singing. For me that's just not interesting; it goes too far down one road."The delicate strength of Dido's music has made her an unexpected critical favorite. She's the kind of artist who's often dismissed by tastemakers as too bland, yet many find themselves drawn into her songs despite themselves. "It has its own kind of integrity," wrote Barry Walters in Rolling Stone, reviewing 2003's "Life for Rent." Similar, somewhat startled praise is now filtering in for "Safe Trip Home.""She's much maligned as hitting that place on the first album where every 25- to 35-year-old woman owned her record," said Nic Harcourt, the outgoing music director of KCRW, who claims first rights on playing Dido in the U.S. "Then it sort of becomes, 'Oh my God, she's everywhere.' But if you take a listen to the songs, she's just a really good songwriter. At the end of the day, that's what comes through."Legacy of vocalistsDido is a careful miniaturist in a field in which bold strokes are more rewarded, especially from women. Emerging from England's down-tempo electronic music scene in collaboration with her brother, Rollo Armstrong of the band Faithless, her style stood out in contrast to more picturesque divas like Portishead's Beth Gibbons or Tricky's partner, Martina Topley-Bird.But she was also upholding the legacy of reserved feminine voices that extends throughout European pop from Franí§oise Hardy to early Marianne Faithfull to Linda Thompson to Sade, Tracey Thorn and Beth Orton."She's one of the most naturally gifted singers I've witnessed," said Jon Brion, who produced much of "Safe Trip Home," in a phone interview. "Her sense of time, her sense of musicality is huge. Partly because she's had success, and partly because the pure electronic quality of her earlier records, and the subtlety of this kind of singing, I don't think people realize how deeply musical and flowing it is -- and how it influences the musicians around her."Enlisting Brion on "Safe Trip Home" brought the kind of drama Dido welcomes. As a producer, the Los Angeles-based Brion is best known for spinning gold from unruly souls like Kanye West, Rufus Wainwright and Fiona Apple. He and Dido first connected as writing partners, but a studio collaboration soon evolved."I was actually a fan of her writing," Brion said. "With a lot of people who are making things, you feel like it's running through a borrowed filter. It's their idea of what it means to be an artist. Whereas, there's a point in which you realize somebody's intelligent and self-aware enough to take the time to run things through their filter. That's the attraction for me."Brion encouraged Dido to try new things, starting with an unexpected basic: playing the drums. Sitting behind the kit, as well as working with the top-notch drummers Brion recruited, including Mick Fleetwood, Jim Keltner, Questlove and Matt Chamberlain, prompted Dido to delve deeper into the rhythmic core of her sound."I come from a dance music background, and I went through all the phases when I was young of loving dub and reggae, and then into hip-hop," she said. "Learning to play the drums as well really opened up my brain. I'll be writing a song on the guitar, and maybe a little stuck on that, and I'll move to the piano, and now it's this really liberating thing that I can go to the drums. Because to me a song is just about the flow of it, it just has to flow and me to never notice in a way, it has to feel whole and real."Brion marveled at Dido's instinctive feel for percussion. "I found a drum kit I thought would be appropriate for her," he said. "She said, 'What's a basic beat?' I told her and started playing along with her on guitar. She immediately got it. I swear to God, in 30 seconds it was her groove. Playing a lot of instruments, I've discovered that eventually your personality comes out. But I am not kidding, in a minute and a half she was playing this beautiful mid-tempo groove that was the essence of her."Jumping from guitar to piano to drums and working with live players instead of loops and samples, Dido found herself renewed."I gained this huge confidence in my feel," she said. "Before I would pick up a guitar and say, 'I can't play like so and so, why can't I do what Eric Clapton can do?' And I'd just sort of beat [myself] up a bit. And then I'd be playing piano or guitar when I first met Jon, and he gave me so much confidence in what I did, that it just sort of built up into something. And it became the fundamental."After her sessions with Brion, Dido returned to London, thinking that "Safe Trip Home" was done. But she couldn't stop writing."I went home, and I had all my instruments around, and I now knew how to record and work all the computer programs and everything, and how to engineer it, and ended up basically doing a whole album's worth of stuff on my own at home, from what I'd learned," she recalled.At first she thought she'd keep these new efforts to herself, but soon she shared them with her brother. He encouraged her to complete the songs, and several appear on the new collection.Taking risksHer expanded sense of self also helped Dido take new thematic risks. At the album's core is a confrontation with stasis and mortality, spurred by the death of Dido's father from lupus in 2006. Songs such as the album's centerpiece, "Grafton Street," capture the complexity of a family member's lingering departure. Others consider how even the happiest circumstances -- like settling down in a relationship ("Look No Further") or having a child ("Us 2 Little Gods") -- contain their own small deaths, as other possibilities are put aside." 'Look No Further' is a prime example of something where I want to express something really simple and pure and beautiful, but I also can't help myself having a little bit of doubt," Dido said. "And a song about something absolutely devastating can be uplifting and hopeful as well. 'Grafton Street' is an example of that. It's definitely a sad song, but there's something in there for me which is talking in such a loving way about something devastating because that's how I felt. There's always a bit of both for me, and that's what I find exciting about the world.""Grafton Street" is a masterstroke, and it even risks not being subtle -- its climax comes via a near-psychedelic multi-tracked recorder solo. Dido learned the unfashionable instrument as a child and playing it "felt like home," she said. She wrote the song with another inspirational friend -- veteran producer and artist Brian Eno, whose 1975 album "Another Green World" offered solace during her father's last days."You know how you get those albums that are so emotional but comforting?" she said. "Almost like a safe place to be, you know? Around the time that Dad was dying, that's what I was listening to. And I thought, God, I'd love to do some writing with Brian Eno."The sessions with Eno, whom Dido had known casually for years, yielded several songs. She's keeping them, with many others, in a stash for future release. Meanwhile, she's planning to tour small spaces with her band, and even to get behind the drum kit once in a while."I'd actually love to be in a band at some point," she said. "The thing that would excite me next, to learn more, would be to play for someone else while they're singing. That would be a whole other step. It would be really interesting."
Dido Safe Trip Home (Arista ESSENTIAL "Northern Skies"It's taken nine years and two tries, but Dido has finally given her debut the follow-up it deserves. The singer easily bests 2003's "Life for Rent" by forgoing radio-friendly "Thank You" clones in favor of following her muse where it's been leading since the millennium. In the case of "Safe Trip Home," that means finally indulging the trip-hop jones she hinted at on her never ending "No Angel" tour. For nearly nine minutes, the song "Northern Skies" is pushed along by a subterranean bass and a dry but inexorable beat, and the combination carries the groove to the end, even as electronic flourishes drip over them. "Grafton Street" and "Never Want to Say It's Love" play it lighter, resulting in a chillout vibe similar to Air or Goldfrapp's "Seventh Tree," while "The Day Before the Day" is electronica without the electronics. Whatever the backdrop, Dido's voice retains the warmth at its core, no matter how flat her sleepwalking affect seems to be. Her vocals are subdued not out of indifference but out of sublimation; she seems to measure every word in the rattling, gently orchestral "Look No Further" for fear of what will happen if she drops her guard. "Safe Trip Home" might lack the hooks of Dido's earlier work, but even if it doesn't get under your skin it manages to take you somewhere worth the journey. (Out tomorrow)
After achieving notoriety as a down-tempo, easy-listening songstress, British singer-songwriter Dido shakes up her image on Safe Trip Home, her latest album, by taking a darker turn along the way. And not an album too soon, since the world probably couldn’t handle another collection of her ho-hum mellow musings.The album’s first single, “Don’t Believe In Love,†establishes the tone for the entire album. Set to a kind of sad, kind of groovy beat, the track is laced with strings and humming to accent Dido’s pronounced disenchantment with love. This matching of somberness to a faster tempo recurs throughout; however, Dido’s voice is so soft and smooth it often almost masks the gloomy blues of the album. It’s a refreshing sound, though, and a smart coupling for Dido. Departing from past albums in which she sounded impersonal, almost as if she was merely observing and commenting on her life, Safe Trip Home feels more sung from the soul, replacing apathy with candidness and solemnity. In fact, the album succeeds the most in the songs that sound least like the Dido we had previously known. This “newness†is largely owed to a variety of instruments and styles — her voice remains unchanged. For example, “Us 2 Little Gods†is built on a fast-tempo of acoustic guitar and clapping but incorporates cowbell, organ and humming as well. Without fail it tempts the foot to start tapping along. Similarly, “Let’s Do the Things We Normally Do†employs strings and organ again, with piano and acoustic guitar chiming in occasionally, to complement Dido as she sings to a simple bongo-drum beat. The broadest influence is the strings that creep into nearly every track, sometimes hauntingly, sometimes soothingly. Yet it really comes down to tempo and rhythm that distinguishes Safe Trip Home as an overall successful, pleasant album. Essentially Dido has taken the sedative nature out of the easy-listening genre. While still a lighter sound, there is no meditative, sleep-inducing Enya-like quality to be found. Instead, Safe Trip Home delivers Dido’s somber yet funky take on the blues, showcasing an array of instruments from Irish flute to organ. Yet the strong basis of Safe Trip Home is built upon her consistently impressive vocals and the genuine narrative quality to the lyrics that defy the sheen of mass production.Even the songs that aren’t terribly memorable (of which there are many) aren’t worth skipping over because they still feel infused with a little bit of soul. Such so-so songs comprise a good portion of the album, including “Quiet Times,†“It Comes And It Goes†and “Look No Further,†and tend to feel a bit like fluff between the songs more packed with life or feeling.Although the word “edgy†is still far from describing Dido, Safe Trip Home offers a new, darker yet livelier feel that might do well to redefine her reputation a little. Hell, people might not be embarrassed to say they like Dido anymore. Maybe that’s too far. Either way, the album does well to make easy-listening a bit easier to listen to. 4 stars out of 5
Quiet Times on Grey's Anatomy19/11/08If you're in the US, check out tomorrow night's episode of ABC's Grey's Anatomy to hear one of Dido's new tracks, Quiet Times, soundtracking the show.
