This Time

On her first American album, Anna Domino showed flashes of considerable promise, setting her delicate guitar and voice amidst keyboard-heavy backdrops created with co-writer Michel Delory. The pair did their best work on the first few cuts off This Time; "Own Kind" is a bouncy synth pop number that carries a stinging message about "a generation rotten to the core," while the full-bodied disco groove of "Time for Us" forces Domino to abandon her usual wispy singing, with fine results. Unfortunately, that's not enough to keep the rest of the album from evaporating into a cloud of new age mist, as Domino disappears behind the sterile production (by the soon-to-become-famous Flood) and lifeless songs. She resurfaces only once, on "Lake," the final track, where the annoyingly dramatic synth patches aren't half as evocative as the melody and poetic lyric. This Time ended up being a primer on how not to utilize Domino's skills, a lesson she obviously learned the next time out, on 1988's Colouring in the Edge and the Outline.