Its been a while since I've last seen you! How have you been? Alright, enough of the small talk, lets get to business. Its been over ten days since I last reviewed an album or even wrote about anything pertaining to music, BUT FEAR NOT! I have been hard at work listening to and analyzing music to make sure I have something ready to go ASAP.
"Eating a truffle-flavored french fry, 'If that makes me a terrorist, then I'm a terrorist.'"
M.I.A.'s new album "/\/\ /\ Y /\" (I'll be writing "MAYA" from now on) was released on July 13th as her third album following "Kala" (2007) and "Arular" (2005). Out of the three albums, "MAYA" has received the lowest scores by far, barely scrapping a 69, where as "Arular" received an 88 and "Kala" an 87. M.I.A. has been known as a political rebel through her lyrics and has always spoke out against terrorist regimes in her native India (EDIT: I was just informed by a friend of mine that M.I.A. is not of India descent, but rather was born in the UK and is of Sri Lankan descent. Thanks for the correction, Robby), as well as preaching a personal story of struggle and adversity. "MAYA" doesn't seem to have the strength lyrically that her other two albums have had and, M.I.A. being the rebel she is, has only made things worse with the whirlwind of controversy she has created for herself. Lynn Hirschberg of the New York Times released a cover story of M.I.A. on May 25th, focusing on her new album release and shedding light on many of her personal stories through interviews with both M.I.A. and those close to her. Hirschberg painted a less than flattering picture of M.I.A. to say the least, pointing out several lifestyle contradictions, may of which circle around the lavish life she relishes in, living in an incredibly wealthy neighborhood and wearing "millions of dollars’ worth of gold jewelry" to a photo shoot for her new album, supposedly being proud "knowing that the jewelry [required] a bodyguard." After the cover story had been released, M.I.A. responded by Tweeting "CALL ME IF YOU WANNA TALK TO ME ABOUT THE N Y T TRUTH ISSUE, ill b taking calls all day bitches ;)." To this Tweet she attached a phone number which was Hirschberg's cell phone number. The number was heavily spammed with several admirers of M.I.A. Hirschberg handled the situation with incredible grace, simply stating that while what M.I.A. did was "infuriating" it wasn't surprising and joking that "The messages have mostly been from people trying to hook up with M.I.A. ... If she wants to get together with John at Bard next week, I have his number."
With M.I.A.'s immaturity aside, what the cover story was about was her new album and that's what we're here to talk about as well. "MAYA" starts out well enough with the very industrial sounding "Steppin Up" which contains drills, clanks, other machinery masked across the back beat. However, the rest of her album doesn't contain the same intensity that this song does, save for a few titles which only seem to be found at the start of the album. M.I.A., known for her more rap-like style, seems to migrate toward singing in this album on several track such as "It Takes a Muscle" and "Born Free." "Born Free" is the point at which I lost interest in this album. The song consists of an uptempo running bass line, the pounding of symbols and a bass drum, all topped of with M.I.A., not singing, but rather shouting. The lyrics, while inspired, are sung in such a way that they become annoying and almost hard to listen too. Auto-tune is used fairly heavily, which comes as no surprise seeing as how M.I.A. is not one to be familiar with singing, her producer actually stating that he "made her sing" and that M.I.A. is a "big pop star now, and pop stars sing" (he also noted that in the past, M.I.A. and he worked as a team, but for this album M.I.A. was determined to show "how much she didn’t need [them]" and that she is "postmodern: she can’t really make music or art that well, but she’s better than anyone at putting crazy ideas into motion," something I found hilarious). "Born Free" also seems eerily similar to Nine Inch Nails' "Survivalism" both instrumentally and in context of their music videos. While there hasn't been any sort of connection between the two, Colin brought it up to me, and I thought it was something worth mentioning. You compare the two and let me know what you think.
The latter half of "MAYA" seems to spiral downward with a mess of songs that blend together such as "Meds and Feds," "Tell Me Why," "Space," and "Internet Connection." "Space" is one of the more successful tracks in which M.I.A. sings, creating a pleasant atmosphere both instrumentally and vocally. "Tell Me Why," however, still presents the annoying, whiny voice that can be seen in "Born Free." "Illygirl," while harking back to the start of the album sounding very similar in style to "Steppin Up" and "Lovealot" still manages to throw a whole lot of bullshit together and sound like a mess of noise like "Born Free." These weaker songs, however, do have stronger songs that attempt to balance them out such as "Lovealot" and "Believer feat. Blaqstarr," both of which emulate her more successful rapping style that was seen in her previous albums. "Believer" is perhaps her strongest song on the album, greatly to the help of Blaqstarr's melodic, soothing vocals, which are a much needed break from M.I.A.'s screeching, high pitched, annoying singing voice.
In the end, M.I.A. creates a fairly decent album, but nothing as strong as her past albums. While her producer seems to believe that she's turned into a pop star, there's a reason for that and it is not singing. M.I.A. gained fame because of her edgy rapping style. Regardless if her lyrics are controversial to her lifestyle, were her album edgy like her past albums, the swarm of controversy that has surrounded this album wouldn't be nearly as bad. However, it seems as though M.I.A. has taken a bow to popular culture in changing her style so drastically, something that rubs what she is supposed to stand for the wrong way. The album has some enjoyable tracks and is worth taking a listen to. The weaker tracks, however, do outweigh the stronger ones; that coupled with M.I.A.'s outlandish immaturity in handling a bad review (if you could call what she did "handling" it) severally hurt her score and tarnishes the reputation she had in the eyes of many of her supporters.
"/\/\ /\ Y /\": 44/100
Take a listen to it here.
No comments:
Post a Comment