Dido Returns with New CD, Safe Trip Home

Dido's third album is a set of soft, haunting melodies about love and loss.

The music and lyrics convey emotion; there is a general theme among these songs about loneliness and loss. Dido's voice remains steady, cool, and somehow unemotional (accept for a few token swoons), but this serves well lyrics about feeling distant and unable to communicate feelings. The music is the emotion boiling underneath; the vocals are the calm, unaffected surface.

Dido first became known for the song Here with Me from her 1999 release No Angel.

The song was also featured as the opening theme for a television show called Roswell (remember Katherine Heigl in her pre-Grey's Anatomy days)? Here with Me became a radio hit, and placed Dido into the same category as Sarah McLachlan and Paula Cole.

Dido reached a wider audience when she sang the vocals for Eminem on a song called Stan, which also sampled the music from her song Thank You.

The follow up album to No Angel, Life for Rent, fell flat. There were a few good tracks, but it was not nearly as powerful as any of the songs on the first release. Still, there was a spark there, and though Life for Rent is not her best work, it's obvious that there is talent behind it.

With Safe Trip Home, the artist seems to have come full circle. There is still some of the electronica feel of her first release, but there is also a clean, instrumental sound. Dido plays most of the instruments on the CD and there are some standout moments, including a flute solo on Grafton Street.

This album is also the most cohesive work that we have heard from this artist so far. The first single Don't Believe in Love, is starting to hit radio, and the album will be released later this month. If you catch the video for the song on You Tube, you'll notice that David Boreanaz makes a quick appearance. He was also in her video for White Flag a few years ago.

Here are the standout songs on the new album: Don't Believe in Love, It Comes and It Goes, us 2 gods, and Let's do the things we normally do.

Safe Trip Home is the perfect album to relax to. Her songs are full of love and angst, the feeling of I love you but... let's hope this thing works out.

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