Rod Liddle Rod Liddle

Beth Ditto: Fake Sugar

<p class="p1"><span class="s1">Fake Sugar is not a bad album by any means – and Ditto has a beautiful and powerful voice – but it is defiantly conventional</span></p>

issue 08 July 2017

Boy is she fat, and getting fatter. I realise this is something we’re not meant to mention when talking about Beth — but it’s kinda the elephant in the room. Literally. And I worry about the lass. These days she makes Mama Cass look like Edie Sedgwick. Of course, we should accept her as she is — a lesbian-identifying, very hefty babe from good ol’ down-home Ar-kin-saw. Her difference, then, is part of the schtick, breaking the mould, etc. — and that’s just fine and (Jim) dandy, providing something palpably ‘different’ actually emanates from the stuff she does. That the proud revelling in difference is not merely a cosmetic exercise designed to shift units. And while perhaps once she could claim this, not any more. You can search high and wide but you won’t find an album as defiantly conventional, as comfortable, as Fake Sugar.

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