Titled S4, I was afraid this fourth Sash album was going to be by the numbers with a few trance songs in foreign languages and not much else. Color my world pleasantly surprised to find a fully realized album that outshines his last album by a huge margin.
Enlisting big name singers - Sarah Brightman (who always sounds great on a dance record) and Boy George (proving that even a superstar drag queen can have a bad make up day), Sash even takes it up a notch daring to cover Puccini's "Nessun Dorma" with such incredible results that I wornder what it would sound like if he could have use Luciano Pavarotti's vocals... hmmm.
Sash's choice of vocalists are always interesting. TJ Davis, singer of the glorious "I Believe" bears more than a striking resemblance to Tina Cousins (who sang on his last two albums), and not just because both were among the 4 artists who have covered "Wonderful Life" in the past year. Marvin Broadie, who we have not heard from since the Soultan's "Cant Take My Hands Off Of You," sings soulfully on "Stop Pushin," which sounds like it was produced by French Affair instead of Sash.
Multiculturalism is in full effect with the underperforming Ganbareh (sung in Japanese) overshadowed by "Luna Llena" (sung in Japanese) and more interestingly "Habibi" (imagine if Angelo Venuto was Arabic and decided to do "L'Italiano" with a Middle Eastern feel.)
S4 is an incredible album that fulfills the high expectations set with by Sash's career making hits "Encore Une Fois," "Mysterious Times" and "Stay."
