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Entertainment Weekly

Sometimes she plays the jukebox-sweetheart card too hard, but there's enough modernity here to save Travelling from tipping into mothballed nostalgia.

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The Guardian

She nimbly skips from 60s girl-group romping (Quick Fix) to Sandie Shaw-inspired melodrama (Back in Time) to pumped-up powerpop (Crying Blood) to rockabilly (LOVE) and sounds entirely assured all the way through.

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Q Magazine

Nothing quite matches that burst of bile ['Crying Blood'], but the title track--choir and all--is heavenly. [Jul 2009, p.118]

Spin

Her enthusiasm immediately leaps from the grooves, but this debut also reveals an emotional and musical range her neo-retro peers lack.

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All Music Guide

Its lengthy incubation process notwithstanding, V.V. Brown's clever debut album, Travelling Like the Light, is as genuine, natural, and deep as mishmash throwback pop can get.

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Los Angeles Times

The result is a smart, sharp little sugar high, with Brown working her slightly scuffed vocals over zippy, high-gloss arrangements loaded with ear-candy detail.

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Billboard.com

The British vocalist was pegged as a Beyoncé-style pop/ R&B diva during an abortive mid-decade Los Angeles stint. But escaping that environment allowed her to develop the genre-straddling, retro-modern mélange of Travelling Like the Light, which was released overseas last July.

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Dot Music

The monster-mash hokum can occasionally grate and Brown lacks El Wino's authoritative way with some of the more downtempo material, but there's plenty to suggest she will find a receptive audience for her passionate pop sound, overbearing quirks and all.

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musicOMH.com

V.V. Brown is a prodigious talent who deserves to have a hit record, even if it's just to reward all the hard work that has clearly gone into this debut.

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Rolling Stone

Her music floats exhilaratingly outside of time, blending thumping garage-rock rhythms, doo-wop chords, Spectorian girl-group stylings.

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Slant Magazine

Brown brings that same sense of fearlessness to her vocal performances. With her slightly raspy timbre, Brown makes for a terrific, swaggering frontwoman....What gets Brown into some trouble is that she often lands on the wrong side of the line that separates homage from rip-off.

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The Onion (A.V. Club)

She’s best in the performative, superficial realm, gleefully donning and discarding personas and influences from song to song. Like any good model, Brown is more conduit than innovator, but she wears her sound well.

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PopMatters

VV Brown employs enough personas to suggest she’s struggling with the decision of who to appeal to. It’s a shame that she hasn’t got a voice of her own, but that’s not to say the album isn’t without its highlights.

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Observer Music Monthly

So where do you go when you've been a backing singer for the Pussycat Dolls? Not straight to the scrapheap but kooky la-la land, it transpires here.

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Mojo

This debut feels more about high budget pop aspirations than the vintage rock'n'roll doo wop influences and 'soul' which Brown has been talking up in interviews. [Aug 2009, p.94]

New Musical Express (NME)

Unless you’re hyped up on a cocktail of Sunny D and Haribo yourself, you’ll find most of this album very annoying indeed.

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What Our Users Said

The average user rating for this album is 8.1 (out of 10) based on 6 User Votes

Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.

Ed P gave it an8:
Vanessa Brown (or atleast Island label) owes me an apology. It has been almost a full year since I was transfixed by Crying Blood via youtube and the wait for the album has been excruciating. I’ve had insomnia induced nights, arduous days and my ipod has been constantly binned with disappointment. Ok, not really, but you get my drift. VV Brown’s arrival into the pop realm causes me much enthusiasm – Akin to my sentiments when I discovered both of Amy Winehouse’s records. A little bit Winehouse, a little bit Ting Tings, VV Brown’s energetic mix of 50s diner rock, classic girl group, indie-pop and soul signal the influx of a potential pop icon. Audaciously, most songs on Travelling Like The Light echo past hits. Crying Blood (incidentally placing 17th in my fave songs of 2008 list) is staggeringly fun, but Bobby Pickett, of Monster Mash fame, would’ve called his lawyers if he wasn’t already six feet under. Quick Fix channels The Beatles’ It’s Your Birthday, Leave recalls the Chiffon’s One Fine Day, while Crazy Amazing’s chorus mirrors a certain famous piano harmony – Just take a listen. So how can I possibly praise an artist for originality when she’s clearly appropriated so many famous songs? Because this is simply not a cover album. Brown has brilliantly employed these songs as inspiration for a concept album, a tribute to the 1950s soda pop era mixed with the best elements of today’s pop/rock. For a seemingly endless array of fine points; take Shark In The Water’s summery immediacy, Quick Fix’s guitar-frenzied sassy attitude, Bottles’ Hawaiian flow or Leave’s haunting lyrical straightforwardness, “How does it feel like this to be caught in a web of a heavy grip, where your mind can’t believe or try to admit that the one you love is a fool, you don’t realise.” Then there’s L.O.V.E, a song that’s so 1950s, you’ll be gripping the seat so you don’t get up and do the twist. Brown may have based this debut on her own failed relationship, but every note and word will resonate with anyone’s own broken hearted story. Brown articulates sentiments to perfection and has a ball doing it. It may have taken half a century, but the 1950s have never sounded so hip.

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Travelling Like The Light

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