Body Keeps The Record

There's a kind of beautifully perverse brilliance to the Pussycat Dolls. Not only are they a sextet who got their start as neo-burlesque dancers in Los Angeles, but they make no bones about being a gleefully manufactured dance-pop act. Open the booklet for their 2005 debut, PCD, and their artificiality is made clear: the first page reads "All lead and background vocals by Nicole Scherzinger," a former member of Eden's Crush, the failed prefab teen pop group assembled on the WB's pre-American Idol reality music show Popstars. There is no pretense that Kimberly, Carmit, Ashley, Melody, and Jessica are there for anything besides filling out the illusion that this is a real performing musical group and providing some serious eye candy for a group that is all about the visuals.

It was much to soul singer Spanky Wilson's surprise – she didn't realize she had had such an impact – when British multi-instrumentalist/producer Will Holland contacted her in her Los Angeles home in 2004, professing his love of her music and wondering if she'd collaborate with him. Still, she agreed to go the studio, and together they did two songs, "Don't Joke with a Hungry Man" and "When You're Through," for Holland's solo project, Quantic, on the album Mishaps Happening. That collaboration worked out so well that they decided to make an entire record together, this time with Holland's full band, the Quantic Soul Orchestra. Wilson's lovely voice is the centerpiece of I'm Thankful, and it does show a bit of its age, but only in the best of ways, deepening it and giving it an added measure of credibility and authenticity while still preserving its expressiveness and strength.