White Dido

Life for Rent doesn't offer anything that drastically different from Dido's debut album, No Angel – the dance beats are marginally fresher, the production is clean and new – but this predictibility is actually rather refreshing because the album delivers on its promise, unlike many sophomore affairs in 2003. That its promise is rather modest doesn't really matter, since Dido is successful at modest songs. She has a sweet, warm voice and a knack for tuneful modern folk-pop that sounds intimate while being confidently catchy and nicely atmospheric. In other words, it retains the feel of No Angel and its two big hits, "Here With Me" and "Thank You," without ever rewriting either song, but contributing songs like "White Flag," "Stoned," "Life for Rent," and "Do You Have a Little Time," which are nearly as memorable.

The year 2001 marked the felicitous moment when Hervé Niquet and Le Concert Spirituel joined Glossa, starting a recording collaboration which to date (2013) has yielded twenty-plus titles. The first of all these was this memorable Dido and Aeneas by Henry Purcell, at the time a somewhat unusual offering from an ensemble which had hitherto made of French Baroque music the cornerstone of its activities.