Do a search for past articles about Soraya, and more than likely, some writer is going to compare her to Sarah McLachlan.
The comparrison is only partly true.
Soraya shares with McLachlan a pristine soprano and very earnest delivery, but that’s where it ends. Unless, of course, McLachlan ever decides to team up with Celine Dion’s songwriters.
Soraya’s music is slickly-produced pop, make no mistake. As such, she shares more with Spanish-singing Italian popster Laura Pausini.
Torre de Marfil is an inoffensive album. It hits all the right spots for a none-too-difficult listening experience — jazzy chords, easy-to-sing melodies, soaring choruses, an occasional flash of ethnic flair, straight-forward hooks.
It’s a well-made product, but on the artistic merit scale, music snobs would have a field day. In short, Soraya is predictable. To her credit, she isn’t cookie-cutter either.
Soraya, who writes her own material, chooses her influences well, and as such, Torre de Marfil works because of its predictability.
“Lejos de Aquí” features an irresistably stirring chorus most cynics would find themselves humming. “El Cruce” thrives on its folk guitar vibe. “Cosas en la Vida” has an electric guitar hook that borders on rocking out.
Soraya’s pristine voice and her unconfrontational music makes for satisfying and plesant listening. It’s no great artistic statment, nor should it be.
If La Ley can be described as Latin America’s answer to Duran Duran, don’t think this Chilean band does nothing but “Girls on Film” and “Hungry Like the Wolf” covers.
Instead, La Ley takes after Duran Duran’s Liberty and The Wedding Album era. Guitarist Pedro Frugone even cites Duran Duran guitarist Warren Cuccurullo as an influence.
The opening track of Uno has a perfectly telling moment. Right before singer Beto Cuevas tears into the soaring chorus of “Eternidad,” there’s a bass solo that sounds like it came straight from John Taylor’s fingers himself.
But that’s not the only influence informing La Ley’s music.
For Uno, the band ditched most of the synthesizers from 1998’s Vertigo that made them sound somewhere between Depeche Mode and Erasure. Now relying more on acoustic and electric guitars, La Ley sounds like the Cure would if Robert Smith took Prozac, and Maná’s Fher cited the Smiths and Echo and the Bunnymen as songwriting influences.
(One track, “Delirando,” could have come off of a L’Arc~en~Ciel album.)
Without all the keyboard effects, La Ley’s songwriting comes into sharper focus, and while there are a few moments that would make either Nick Rhodes or Neil Tennant proud, Uno is mostly Frugone’s showcase.
Fans of La Ley’s more synthetic sound may actually be shocked by the change, but hang in there — Uno features a set of tunes worth listening to over and over again. The Grammy-nominated “Aquí” is only the tip of the proverbial iceberg — other quick favorites include the dramatic “Fuera de Mí”, the driving “Paraíso”, the twangy “Verano Especial” and the showstopping closer “Al Final.”
As bands are wont to do nowadays, La Ley tacked a hidden bonus track after “Al Final” with Cuevas singing in English. The song serves as subtle warning — this band has a singer that can allow La Ley to take on North America if they so wanted.
Somewhere, in some music rag, some writer described Aterciopelados as “trip-hopping” its way through its music.
For anyone who suffers narcopelpsy at the mere mention of the phrase “trip-hop” — nightmares of Portishead dancing in our heads! — worry not.
Oh sure, Aterciopelados’ music is heavy on the special effects, and most of the group’s song range from slow mid-tempo to slightly faster mid-tempo. But the last thing they are is lethargic.
Aterciopelados translates to “the Velvety Ones,” and it’s an appropriate moniker.
The band’s music is indeed propelled by the usual trip-hop/hip-hop beats, but rather than let them thunder like a superslick dance album, the Velvet Ones make them rumble instead. The result — music that makes you want to dance and chill at the same time.
Like some of its best contemporaries in the Genre Formerly Known as Rock en Español Now Unfortunately Called Latin Alternative, Aterciopelados infuses its brand of, ahem, “trip-hop” with definite Latin music influences.
A slowed-down Latin rhythm here (“El estuche”, “El desinflar de tu cariño”), accordions and trumpets there (“Maligno” and “El estuche,” respectively) — there’s no mistake from which American continent this music originates.
And the marvelous glue which holds all these disparate elements together is Andrea Echeverri’s rich alto. Her easy-going delivery suits Aterciopelados’ contradictory moods. Do you dance or do you take a drag from that reefer?
Probably both. Caribe Atomico suits either purpose well.
When I first heard the opening strains of Julieta Venegas’ “Oportunidad,” I thought I’d encountered a Robin Holcomb album I missed.
Then a drum machine kicked in, and Venegas’ powerhouse voice burst in. The illusion was disrupted, but as it turns out, only for a moment.
Venegas has been compared to Fiona Apple and PJ Harvey, and as a marketing angle, it works well enough. Venegas certainly would fit in the whole women-in-rock-Lilith-power thing, but certain things, aside from her singing in Spanish, make Venegas stand out.
First off, when was the last time Sarah McLachlan ever slinged an accordion? The seminal polka instrument’s sound is vital to Venegas’ brand of singer-songwriter rocaroll.
“Antes,” for example, sports the squeezebox’s timbre effectively complemented by plucked strings. On “De mis pasos,” the accordion supplants the guitar in playing rock’s best loved chord progression, I-IV-V.
And none of it sounds remotely ethnic. Well, maybe slightly.
Venegas’ music is infused with the kind of perilous balance between traditional Latin American music and rock music similar to Café Tacuba. Is it no surprise that members of Tacuba make guest appearances and that the album was produced by Gustavo Santaolalla?
Venegas also possess a voice that can crumble walls as well as Sinéad O’Connor’s but maintains a bittersweetness that doesn’t sound precious. If a Celebrity Death Match pitted Venegas against Jewel, Venegas would whop some major posterior. (In a match with Shakira, however, I’d put my money on Ms. Merabek R.)
But when Venegas trades the accordion for the piano, those reminders of Holcomb pop up again.
Holcomb, who released two albums in the early ’90s that realized a downtown New York aesthetic in folk-pop, shares little with Venegas aesthetically, but it’s difficult not to notice some of the same chord voicing in both their slower pieces.
It’s as if Venegas found Holcomb through six degrees of separation, and Wayne Horvitz snuck into the studio while Santaolalla wasn’t looking.
All of that to say Aquí is a stellar debut from a performer whose music sounds like everything and herself at the same time. Does that make sense?
They’ve gotten fancy, those guys in Fastball have.
Not content to just hammer out ear-catching tunes, the Austin, Texas-based trio have upped the production ante on its third album, The Harsh Light of Day.
They’ve done away with two-second pauses between tracks. They’ve thrown in oboes and strings into their arrangements. They’ve included sound effects of trains and an interlude of French bistro music. They even got Brian Setzer and Billy Preston who played with the Beatles to play on a track or two.
In short, Fastball has created an overly ambitious album that just reeks of “Hey! Look at us! We’re a success!”
But do all these bells and whistles add anything to the songs? Not too much, really.
This batch isn’t as immediately catchy as the ones on All the Pain Money Can Buy, Fastball’s breakthrough album from 1998, but after a few spins on the CD player, they’re no less polished or accomplished either.
At the same time, all those little extras don’t seem to be all that necessary. Maybe if The Harsh Light of Day was intended to be some sort of song cycle or grand statement on the level of a Radiohead album, this intentional over-production would sound at home.
A more cynical critic would accuse the band of trying to hide a set of less immediately-gratifying songs behind studio tricks, but really — that’s not the case when you’re dealing with a band that’s skillfully giving alternative rock a twang without being No Depression-blatant about it.
Die-hard Fastball fans would probably call The Harsh Light of Day a really big step in the band’s musical maturity. The rest of us can just enjoy it as nice, slick number.
Paul Simon has long since stopped relying on immediate hooks to get his point across. Nosiree. He’s Paul Simon, after all. He’s been doing this songwriting thing for a while, and he’s an arteest, goshdarnit.
As such, Simon loves to tell lengthy, mouthy stories with lyrics that border on prose and melodies that contort to fit his wordy verses. But ever a master, Simon gives enough of a hummable chorus to invite listeners into his narratives.
Take that experience and multiply it by 11, and you have You’re the One.
Simon has toned down the pan-cosmopolitan experiments of the last 15 to 20 years in favor of a more minimalist, intimate sound. The African rhythms and guitar licks from Graceland and The Rhythm of the Saints are still there, but they’re not the stars of this semi-unplugged show.
Nope. It’s pretty much Simon’s plaintive croon gliding over shimmering guitars and tastefully restrained percussion. Back in college, we’d call this “study music.” Don’t expect to enjoy this album if you put it on your stereo, then proceed to do household chores.
If anything, You’re the One demands the undivided attention of the listener. It’s hard enough to sing along with “Darling, Lorraine,” but its bittersweet story about a marriage gone lackluster makes for some touching listening. The pompously titled “Señorita with the Necklace of Tears” comes together when Simon chimes: “That’s the way it’s always been/And that’s the way I like/And that’s how I want it to be.”
On paper — or rather, pixels — that combination of Bruce Hornsby and K.C. and the Sunshine Band looks worse than it sounds.
You’re the One is also album that requires a few listens before its beauty seeps into your consciousness. Don’t buy this album if you suffer from attention deficit disorder whenever you hear music that lacks a backbeat. It requires patience and a bit of perserverance for this disc to win you over.
If Ray of Light could be described as “wet,” then Music is definitely “dry.”
And we’re not just talking about the unprocessed vocal track producer Mirwais Ahmadzai employed throughout the album either.
The drowning man studio effects that washed Madonna’s voice in ethereal introspection on Ray of Light has been replaced by a very metallic, square-wave synthetic sound that’s as cold as it is impersonal.
This time around, Madonna doesn’t want us to join her on a spiritual journey — she wants us to just shut up and dance.
Mirwais and previous collaborator William Orbit uses some pretty interesting timbres on this album, but that’s all they really amount to — something new, maybe even cool but nothing that really adds value to the songs.
The songwriting is drier, too. There isn’t much along the lines of the emotional poignancy of “Frozen” or the exuberance of “Ray of Light,” and some of the tracks that attempt for that depth — “I Deserve It”, “Don’t Tell Me”, “Paradise (Not For Me)” — fall just a bit short.
Music starts off promising enough as a four-on-the-floor dance record, but as it progresses, it loses its direction and focus. It seems as if Madonna couldn’t decide to continue on the thematic path mapped by her last album or take a detour to something a bit new.
She does a bit of both on Music and it comes across as a scattered as a result.
In one sentence: this album ain’t no sequel to Ray of Light.
And in some way, that’s a really good thing. Make no mistake — Music is an enjoyable album. It’s just not an Important Artistic Statement that some folks — namely, me — expected. Or desired.
Björk wants to organize freedom. How Scandanavian of her.
On the first few tracks of 1998’s Homogenic, she did just that, reigning in the chaos of distorted drums thundering over dramatic swells of strings.
It was one of the most successful combination of acoustic and synthetic timbres recorded.
With Selmasongs, Björk attempts to push that sonic envelope further, bringing in Hollywood musical melodrama into her quirky mix of blue-eyed electro-pop.
Containing only seven songs and clocking in at half an hour, Selmasongs packs a lot of ideas into a short time span. The “clatter, crash, clank” of factory sounds turns into the chorus for “Cvalda.” On “Scatterheart,” the sound of a skipping phonograph needle becomes a back beat.
Even Catherine Deneuve, Björk’s co-star in Dancer in the Dark (for which Selmasongs was written), adds a dash of surrealism to the already bizzare, dream-like soundscape Björk has fashioned.
Some writers have suggested Selmasongs is too short for these ideas to gestate, and perhaps they’re right. There’s a lot of stuff — no, make that a helluvalot of stuff going on in these tracks, but they probably wouldn’t have been better or more interesting if they had more room to breathe.
If anything, Selmasongs sounds like what it is — songs written for a movie.
There’s just a hint of something incidental about these songs, and if they don’t make for a very coherent music listening experience, well that’s probably because they’re taken out of context of their origin.
In other words, let’s see how these songs work in the movie.
P.S. About her duet with Thom Yorke of Radiohead — well, his singing isn’t exactly awash with emotion, and Björk does vocal gymnastics around him. It’s not until the end of the song where Yorke’s whiskey-rasp deadpan sweetens up and becomes an appropriate foil to Björk’s thunderous range.
Vapor Transmission follows in a great tradition of albums like Molotov’s Apocalypshit, The Brilliant Green’s Terra 2001 and Nine Inch Nails’ The Fragile.
All of them, save for Terra 2001, sound exactly like their immediate predecessor but don’t possess the same luster.
Apocalypshit is the same blistering rap-metal Molotov offered on ¿Donde jugaran las niñas?, and The Fragile is just a longer, meandering version of The Downward Spiral. Only Terra 2001 improves on its predecessor, The Brilliant Green, while sounding exactly the same.
Why is that?
Pretty much, it boils down to hooks. Terra 2001 had better hooks than The Brilliant Green. The same goes for Vapor Transmission and Candyass — the latter album had better songwriting.
That’s not to say Vapor Transmission isn’t likeable. In fact, there’s something downright appealing in how Orgy pillages New Wave and glam rock with post-Trent Reznor industrial.
Even if the actual songs don’t quite surmount the bar established by Candyass, fans of heavily synth-processed guitar hooks and pounding layers of thundering drums and drum machines will eat Vapor Transmission up.
And yet, put each album side-by-side, and it’s hard to even tell the difference twixt the two.
Jay Gordon still sounds like Marilyn Manson would if Manson could hold a note. The choruses of the songs still possess a flair for the dramatic. And no instrument on this album isn’t somehow put through some sort of effects processing. The studio is still as much of an instrument for Orgy as the guitars, bass and drums themselves.
It’s a matter of degrees, really. Candyass is only slightly better than Vapor Transmission, and since Candyass was downright likeable, it follows that Vapor Transmission has its own appeal as well.
All that to say: go ahead and buy this album if you’re a big fan of Orgy; use caution if you just bought Candyass to get the cover of New Order’s “Blue Monday.”
Rather than risk a series of potential duds, Williams’ U.S. label, Capitol, culled the best tracks from the erstwhile British sex symbol’s first two albums and packaged it as his debut.
The Ego Has Landed was trimmed of filler, and it was one of the guiltiest pleasures of 1999 — a textbook collection of pop that neither disguised its commercial appeal nor totally surrendered to straight-forward formula.
Sing When You’re Winning, as such, is Robbie’s first album released on both sides of the Atlantic without doctoring.
How does it hold up? Very well, actually.
“Let Love Be Your Energy” contains one of the most infectous choruses written this year. “Rock DJ” can easily be one of those silly, grating songs that induces chronic head-bobbing.
Williams is as much a party-guy as he is introspective pop singer-songwriter. For every feel-good Wham!-George Michael moment like “Kids,” there’s heart-felt balladering such as “If It’s Hurting You.”
“Better Man” attempts to be the album’s “Angels,” while “Supreme” fails in its attempt to incorporate a clever quote — this time, Gloria Gaynor’s “Survive” — as effectively as “Millenium.”
In short, it’s business as usual for Williams, who is pretty much a national obsession in his native England — well-crafted Europop that suites his rough-hewned voice. Williams has struck on a very lucrative muse, and even he’s smart enough not to fix what isn’t broken.
At the same time, Sing When You’re Winning is like an Enya album — it’s the same one Williams has been recording for the past four years, and if a listener really wants to be picky about it, there’s fault to be found.
Which is a roundabout way of saying that there are few surprises on this album, and it won’t recreate that kind of revelatory feelings first-time listenrs experience upon hearing a couplet like “I look like Kiss but without the make-up.”
Not a bad thing really. Williams and his collaborators, namely Guy Chambers, are a hook factory, and they produce some nice ear candy.