Bella - 'No One Will Know' (Mint) Released 10/03/08

US-Canada cross breed that is Bella enter the UK frame with an electro-rock clash that is more of a sublime throw back to early 90’s UK pop than anyone would care to admit admiring.  Primarily an indie jaunt, ‘No One Will Know’ has adventures into the ethereal and dreamlike pop. Success Bella revel in a subtlety that many artists have screamingly abandoned. As such, Bella cut through above the rest not by shouting above the rest, but by communicating in a much better medium. As witnessed in title track ‘No One Will Know’ the delicate voices that at times convey an intravenous emotional side to Bella far deeper than a pop band has a right to.

The rights to this vocal tour-de-force are primarily shared between drummer Tiffany Garrett Sotomayor and keys player Charla McCutcheon. Between them lie a clutch of historic female front persons ranging from Cranberries’ Dolores O'Riordan ( best heard in the likes of ‘Didn’t Mean To Break Our Love’) to the heady heights of My Bloody Valentines’s Bilinda Butcher, a band with whom Bella demonstrate a degree of sonic kinship across ‘No One Will Know’. 

For all this high brow talk of the ethereal, there’s plenty on the readily consumable pop front to enjoy here, with ‘For The Last Time’ demonstrating a far more candy pop side to this group. And though not particularly original or dynamic, but it is unassumingly enjoyable to a degree. Yet a battle exists within the album; that between the spacious eclecticism and sounding dangerously amateur. While Bella’s canon of material can’t be faulted, their tools in its creation certainly can. There’s a reason low grade 80’s synths are long gone in music. Yet the insistence on their presence on nearly every track potentially brilliant tracks such as the panting-tense ‘Go’ are tainted by cheap sound and lose part of their edge.

Like wise, guitarist Cameron Fraser’s occasionally steps into the vocal frame for a refreshing change, he simply lacks the musical dimensions of his female counterparts. ‘Ocean or Lakeshore’ for example, though impressive in it’s own right, can only carry off a mediocre calibre in comparison to the other female vocal driven tracks.

‘No One Will Know' is a real multifaceted release- and not all of those facets are good. Despite fleecing moments of exceptional song writing and performance, there is enough to pull this album apart on for it not to warrant serious consideration. ‘No One Will Know’ gives the sense of a band at their personal zenith and (harsh as it sounds) still not being quite good enough. A noble effort indeed, but for its flaws there’s no cigar for Bella on one.