It’s ironic that her first LP was called Great Expectations the book inspired her as did Educating Rita when

It’s ironic that her first LP was called Great Expectations (the book inspired her, as did Educating Rita) when those expectations were pretty limited. When the music took off, a stylist had the idea of kitting her out as a Dickensian urchin – fortunately, she hadn’t said much about her preoccupation with The Wizard of Oz. The way she left her humdrum surroundings and discovered a bizarre new land, she explains now in her gruff Yorkshire burr, was like Dorothy’s adventure.That may have been a more appropriate analogy. When Jean-Francois Cecillon – head of EMI UK and a man under pressure to find new talent with the lasting appeal of roster artists like Cliff Richard or Kate Bush – stumbled on Archer in 1992, she must have looked like bullion. He backed her to the tune of pounds 100,000, orchestrating a vast campaign and sending his discovery on a killing promotional tour.

Brought up on a Bradford council estate, her first job was as a machinist in a factory, but she aimed higher – she wanted to be a clerk typist. (When she was signed, Archer, a prize worrier, panicked: “Oh God, I’m black, I’m small, I’m a woman. If they want somebody with long legs, big boobs and a gorgeous figure, that’s not me.”) But mainstream singers don’t really need anything but a good larynx. They don’t need to be hip – it could be argued that Madonna became mainstream at the moment she lost her feral cool, though kd lang has made the transition while retaining some vestige of outree style; indeed mainstreamers hardly require a personality at all.Archer is still in the process of being shaped by the business, and this may be what she needs to watch.

Produced by Mitchell Froom (Crowded House, Suzanne Vega, Richard Thompson), Bloom’s arrangements are already being compared to The Beatles, Bacharach and Simon & Garfunkel – influences perhaps more vogue-ish now than ever But without Archer’s rich voice, they’d be nothing. Her phrasing, intimacy and depth give her the polish others of her ilk strive for.
But who exactly are the others? Archer’s arena is the amorphous mass of the mainstream, which by definition can’t be categorised – the grail of all A&R men, her sound fits rock, pop and soul in equal measure. If she’s a vessel, Archer isn’t a smooth, vacuous, easy-on-the-eye suburban goddess like Mariah Carey or, maybe, Celine Dion. Bloom is more, and at the same time less, than just another offering from a female singer/songwriter; first, because it’s not jagged, or eccentric, or demanding – it is, above all, an easy listen – and second, because Archer’s boyfriend and co-musician John Murphy wrote most of the lyrics. But Archer is going to have to talk a fair amount in the next few months because, three years after “Sleeping Satellite” plotted its insidious course, Archer has delivered Bloom, a crafted album of lush melodies and melancholic lyrics that will more than stand the test of time.