I’ll be bold and go ahead and call it: set-up. If there is any pin-up girl to the hipster music critics it is Ms. Johansson. I wholeheartedly agree, she had some awesome performances in Ghost World, as well as Lost In Translation. When that fact is combined with the general agreement upon the validity of Wait’s catalog… now this starts to get suspicious.
I like to stick with a general rule with artists whose catalog I tend to occasionally indulge: They are either masked, dead, or just fucking insane. I’m not sure how I would react if someone I preemptively found attractive made a record.
That being said, I totally WANT to hate this album. I really do. They trick me with the chamber pop instrumental intro, and they second song she sounds like a man at first… but damn! It hits me on track 4... her vocals are irreverent and haunting. It’s a darker Fiona Apple… it’s what one would listen to driving across the country alone with a big open sky above, exploding with stars.
Not to give her all the credit, the arrangements are beautiful. The wall of sound is lush, and definitely compliments the low tone of her voice. Everything is balanced and where it should be. She hits her notes, and in my opinion, there is not an obvious use of pitch correction… so the girl has a vague understanding of music theory!
For what it is, it’s good. I can accept the novelty of it, and for whatever marketing reason behind it, it was well executed. My only regret in all of this was having my Last.Fm application open while analyzing it, further proof that I fell into the hype of my music elitist male counterparts.
* * In unrelated news: If anyone knows how to delete history on a Last.Fm account, please email me ASAP. * *
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment