Sia, This is Acting: 'Dark brilliance amid some bizarre disappointments', album review

Download: Reaper; One Million Bullets

Musician Sia and dancer Denna Thomsen perform at An Evening with Women benefiting the Los Angeles LGBT Center (Getty Images)

Sia Furler has always had a knack for writing a hit. While her previous album 1000 Forms of Fear was far from shabby, scoring a No 5 in the UK albums chart, her songs have always fared better when sung by someone other than herself. “Diamonds”, sung by Rihanna, and “Déjà Vu”, with Giorgio Moroder, are two of her biggest hits to date.

This is Acting got its name, apparently, because many of the songs were originally written by Sia for other singers. “Alive” was co-written with, but then rejected by, Adele.

A mistake on Adele’s part perhaps? Where Sia’s voice fails to fly on the rousing chorus you can picture Adele belting it out with gusto, adding the flickers of raw emotion that Sia somehow fails to touch upon.

But there is an upside to Sia holding onto to the tune. Her interpretation offers a grimier finish, with her almost rapping the chorus that undulates along with Sia’s distinctive accent.

Elsewhere it’s easy to imagine “Cheap Thrills”, originally intended for Rihanna, with its juddering R&B beat, being rejected with a sneer.

The simplistic lyrics about putting on make-up and “having fun tonight” lack any of Sia’s usual metaphorical cunning and the lack of regimented instrumentation makes it collapse on the ears like soggy trifle. “One Million Bullets” is a quite a dud too, with a unnecessary, manufactured judder that mimics a stuck record.

It’s a bizarrely jarring piece of work, presumably the work of producers Greg Kurstin and Jesse Shatkin, that makes the tune feel over-produced. The idea, too of taking a million bullets rather than just the standard one bullet seems faintly ridiculous.

On “Move Your Body” Sia offers something of Rihanna’s natural Barbadian swagger, but doesn’t relax into the chorus, instead introducing a trill screech which sounds as though she is rushing to get to the end of the song.

Does she, too, wish it could be over more quickly? One can’t help but feel she should do what she does best and collaborate: get a few more male vocalists on there who can reach the notes where her own voice fails her.

It’s a pity there are some disappointing songs here because elsewhere on the record there is real brilliance. Darker themes bring more sophisticated balladry: album opener “Bird Set Free” is about finding her own voice – presumably about the journey to being a singer in her own right rather than hovering in the background as a writer.

She describes having a one-way ticket to a place where “all the demons go” over surging piano and, although she fails to reach the same soaring heights as, say, the euphoric chorus of “Chandelier”, the tune still packs a punch.

“Reaper” is a gleaming stand-out success. Co-written and produced by Kanye West, it’s about being stalked by death and coming “close to heaven’s door”. With a saucy, slurred growl that’s quite unlike her typical sound, Sia orders death to “come back when I’m good and old, I’ve got drinks to drink and men to hold”. Wondrous.