Like her or loathe her, Geri Halliwell can't seem to do anything quietly, which is why her second solo album is appropriately titled Scream if you Wanna Go Faster. Gone are the strings, breathy vocals and Diva like aspirations of her debut Schizophonic, Geri instead settling on a more straightforward pop approach. After the pointless motor-engine samples of "Dragster" (bizarrely a track on their own) she launches into "Scream if you Wanna Go Faster", a 1960s tinged rock track. What follows is a rather hotchpotch of style and influences that refuse to settle into a cohesive whole. Geri serves up helpings of acoustic ballads in "Circle Round the Moon" and "Love is the Only Light", up-beat funk with "Shake Your Bootie Cutie" and "Feels Like Sex". She is again extolling the virtues of girl power in "Strength of a Woman and even slips back into Spice Girls mode for "Don't Call Me Baby", which sounds rather similar to her former group's "Stop". Geri's vocal range is particularly limited but she wisely never stretches herself. The bad apple and easily the worst song on the album is her pointless, tacky cover of "It's Raining Men", which manages to trample all over the melody and subvert the innocent playful lyrics of the original and create something rather more tawdry. Penultimate track "Heaven and Hell (Being Geri Halliwell)" is an enjoyable send-up of her celebrity image and a poke at tabloid journalists but Heaven and Hell is also a fitting description of this brave but ultimately flawed second album. -

-Duncan Whitlam