Rapid Fire Reviews: Poptomism with Carly Rae Jepsen, M.I.A and Phoenix
It's gonna be a blitz at the end of the year as I try to cover as many of the records I've been meaning to as possible. That also means the categories are gonna get looser and looser, just like this very generous and sweeping use of the term "pop" to cover everything we're talking about today.
The Loneliest Time - Carly Rae Jepsen
This one is totally my bad. I love Carly and this record absolutely deserved a full review closer to its release date. It just happened to come out during a busy week and get shelved for a while but I've been listening to it a lot since it came out. That's because this record despite the inconsistencies does have some songs that are just as amazing of high points as her previous two. That started with the singles which I liked quite a bit collectively highlighted by the glittery anthem Talking To Yourself and the breezy infectious lead single Western Wind, but it isn't limited to the singles. That includes the opening track Surrender My Heart whose wordy refrains are completely irresistible as well as the confessional but groovy Sideways which also features a number of lyrical highlights. Later on in the record, the highlights come from songs like the slightly distant but still effortlessly bouncy So Nice and the much more outwardly vibrant Shooting Star. The issue with the record that I and many other people have expressed is that there are just a number of deep cuts here that feel below Carly's normal level. For the girl who has entire records worth of great B-Sides for pretty much every album cycle, it's hard to imagine how some of these songs slipped onto the record with a complete lack of any catchy refrains or girlish charm that has made so many Carly deep cuts soar to beloved fan favorites in the past. Even then I think the slide has been exaggerated. There really aren't THAT many duds and they really aren't ever even offensively bad, just dull. For the most part, this record sees Carly delivering the quality highlights she always has and it's only the folds in-between where any issues arise. 7/10
MATA - M.I.A
Normally M.I.A is another artist I would be absolutely killing to cover, but this album came out in a busy week. It was both busy because of other musical releases and because it was right in the middle of an outburst of anti-vaccine sentiment that she posted on her social media. Another source of trepidation I had about covering the record came from just how inconsistent the singles were. While they would occasionally for into bangers some of them felt more like the amateurish and unfinished styles of Drain Gang than the normal effects and polish of M.I.A. All of that kind of comes to a head on the opening tracks Freedom Is A State Of Mind, which are messier than you'd expect from an M.I.A song but honestly add up to quite a good opening. It also highlights another issue with digesting the music in the aftermath of her comments because when she says "Freedom is a state of mind" you really do kind of have to wonder what she means by freedom. But it doesn't take long for the huge misses to start rearing their ugly heads. On top of some really rough singles like Popular the album also contains songs like 100% Sustainable and Energy Freq. The record bounces really strangely between these kind of unfinished almost seemingly improved songs and a much better, more detailed and focused collection of tracks that sound much more up to M.I.A's standards. Right in the middle of this record, we get the one-two punch of Zoo Girl and Time Traveler, both of which are absolute bangers with a deep well of insane instrumentation and production tricks that help them stand out. But then after that, we get right back into the rough parts of the record with the aforementioned Popular back-to-back with one of the worst deep cuts Puththi. Ultimately this record is just a decrease in quality pretty much across the board from M.I.A. While there are some highlights to be found here they are alongside a number of the worst songs of her career, making the listening experience of this record somewhat painful. 5.5/10
Alpha Zulu - Phoenix
Phoenix spent the 2000's becoming one of the most interesting and exciting indie pop acts around, culminating in 2009's landmark Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix. Since then, however, it's been far apart and pretty inconsistent releases from the band. While 2017's Ti Amo was an improvement over 2013's Bankrupt it still represented a step in the right direction for the band and I was hoping they would take another one here. Early signs were pretty good with solid singles in Tonight which excites with a catchy hook and a feature from Ezra Koenig of Vampire Weekend. The second single Winter Solstice was a pretty different approach pairing icy synths with a much slower unfolding instrumental but with the same positive results. Even though I wasn't as crazy about the title track, lead single, and opener to the record which feels much too goofy for me, I was still excited about the record. While the album certainly doesn't take many big swings artistically, I think that the band really settles into their sound among the deep cuts here. Not everything is perfect and there are certainly some hooks that don't exactly soar, but with solid deep cuts like Season 2 and the 5-minute closer Identical there's plenty to enjoy here. Phoenix isn't rewriting the book on synth-driven indie-pop or on their own sound as a band, but this is a pretty solid collection of tracks all things considered. 6.5/10
