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Album tramp cont'd
More of the album trawl:
Celine Dion Taking Chances: For the first three tracks this is absolutely ace, sure thing in my top ten I'm thinking: the title song, a Platinum Weird cover on the first half of which she copies Kara DioGuardi's exact phrasing but adds an eerie precision that brings out the melody better than Kara did. Then when the song gets angsty Celine gets all dominantly Celine and flubs the angst, but that just means she delivers Dion rather than DioGuardi, and I'm coming to prefer her version. Then my favorite thing on here, a cover of Heart's "Alone," warm sentiment followed by totally appropriate Giant Blasts Of Voice, Scalings Of The Matterhorn, and Piercings Of The Sky. Then "Eyes On Me," glitzed-up Asianisms to a Diddley beat.
But then she runs out of songs. She's expanding her already gigantic stylistic range even further: (1) doing pre-'60s show stylings with the tasteful singing that when she tried this a couple of times back on A New Day Has Come just imprisoned her in the "richness" of the moods but now gets her relaxed. She's continually becoming a smarter singer. But those two New Day tracks were genuine good old songs, while here she's doing new compositions that rate as Kinda Not Bad But... (2) Soul and blues shouting and growling and emoting, which of course she's done before, in fact these have been basic to her style all along, but now she's veering towards doing soul as soul. When she goes extreme on it, as when she gets all Otis and Aretha and Janis in "That's Just The Woman In Me," she's ridiculous but in a passionately good way ("Searching for that imperious, mysterious femme fatale kind of stuff, yeah/But if you don't know by now that it's me, anyhow/Then baby you've got it WRONG"), but again too many of the other tracks end up as middle-ground so-what kind of stuff. All nicely listenable, some good names among the songwriters (another DioGuardi, a couple of Linda Perrys, a Ben Moody, some Aldo Nova), and maybe a few more of these tracks will break through on subsequent spins. But I'm let down.
M.I.A. Kala: When I'm listening this is powerful and playful, and I keep forgetting about it otherwise. I wish there were more samples. Well, I wish she'd go back to Piracy Funds Terrorism, though I guess there's more fun than funds in that. She's kind of the impresario of her tastes on this: Here's what she likes and here she'll play with it and squall all over it, and here she'll ride a good twist of sound. Don't know why I haven't connected.
Ted Nugent Love Grenade: He yells "Funk U" and likes girl scout cookies and Indians but dislikes taxes, and his voice is more tired than at times past but his guitar playing still wanks and jerks around appealingly. I wasn't expecting anything one way or another but this rocks and goofs predictably but effectively, at least for its first half.
I posted this on the Teenpop Thread:
I finally got Avril Lavigne's Best Damn Thing from the library and I kind of hate it. The Luke tracks are catchy like "Girlfriend" and overbearing like "Girlfriend" and make me feel like I'm walking through a blizzard of sugar, the Butch Walker tracks are like the Luke tracks but not even catchy, the more normal and warm tracks are just blah as songs and even they're given a bright sheen that irritates me in the context of all this blistering sugar. I can see how someone who at 17 was trying to grow up and sounded like it will at age 22 try to reaffirm her youthful exuberance, but the result here just seems screechy and infantile. Of course I need to invoke The Boney Joan Rule, since as a fan of "Cum On Feel The Noize" and "Bodies" I can be plenty enamored of the screechy and the infantile, but this time I'm just annoyed. Which isn't to say that "Girlfriend" isn't catchy and that "I Can Do Better" isn't compelling and "I Don't Have To Try" isn't Runawaysish. But, you know, the Ted Nugent album is more fun.
Celine Dion Taking Chances: For the first three tracks this is absolutely ace, sure thing in my top ten I'm thinking: the title song, a Platinum Weird cover on the first half of which she copies Kara DioGuardi's exact phrasing but adds an eerie precision that brings out the melody better than Kara did. Then when the song gets angsty Celine gets all dominantly Celine and flubs the angst, but that just means she delivers Dion rather than DioGuardi, and I'm coming to prefer her version. Then my favorite thing on here, a cover of Heart's "Alone," warm sentiment followed by totally appropriate Giant Blasts Of Voice, Scalings Of The Matterhorn, and Piercings Of The Sky. Then "Eyes On Me," glitzed-up Asianisms to a Diddley beat.
But then she runs out of songs. She's expanding her already gigantic stylistic range even further: (1) doing pre-'60s show stylings with the tasteful singing that when she tried this a couple of times back on A New Day Has Come just imprisoned her in the "richness" of the moods but now gets her relaxed. She's continually becoming a smarter singer. But those two New Day tracks were genuine good old songs, while here she's doing new compositions that rate as Kinda Not Bad But... (2) Soul and blues shouting and growling and emoting, which of course she's done before, in fact these have been basic to her style all along, but now she's veering towards doing soul as soul. When she goes extreme on it, as when she gets all Otis and Aretha and Janis in "That's Just The Woman In Me," she's ridiculous but in a passionately good way ("Searching for that imperious, mysterious femme fatale kind of stuff, yeah/But if you don't know by now that it's me, anyhow/Then baby you've got it WRONG"), but again too many of the other tracks end up as middle-ground so-what kind of stuff. All nicely listenable, some good names among the songwriters (another DioGuardi, a couple of Linda Perrys, a Ben Moody, some Aldo Nova), and maybe a few more of these tracks will break through on subsequent spins. But I'm let down.
M.I.A. Kala: When I'm listening this is powerful and playful, and I keep forgetting about it otherwise. I wish there were more samples. Well, I wish she'd go back to Piracy Funds Terrorism, though I guess there's more fun than funds in that. She's kind of the impresario of her tastes on this: Here's what she likes and here she'll play with it and squall all over it, and here she'll ride a good twist of sound. Don't know why I haven't connected.
Ted Nugent Love Grenade: He yells "Funk U" and likes girl scout cookies and Indians but dislikes taxes, and his voice is more tired than at times past but his guitar playing still wanks and jerks around appealingly. I wasn't expecting anything one way or another but this rocks and goofs predictably but effectively, at least for its first half.
I posted this on the Teenpop Thread:
I finally got Avril Lavigne's Best Damn Thing from the library and I kind of hate it. The Luke tracks are catchy like "Girlfriend" and overbearing like "Girlfriend" and make me feel like I'm walking through a blizzard of sugar, the Butch Walker tracks are like the Luke tracks but not even catchy, the more normal and warm tracks are just blah as songs and even they're given a bright sheen that irritates me in the context of all this blistering sugar. I can see how someone who at 17 was trying to grow up and sounded like it will at age 22 try to reaffirm her youthful exuberance, but the result here just seems screechy and infantile. Of course I need to invoke The Boney Joan Rule, since as a fan of "Cum On Feel The Noize" and "Bodies" I can be plenty enamored of the screechy and the infantile, but this time I'm just annoyed. Which isn't to say that "Girlfriend" isn't catchy and that "I Can Do Better" isn't compelling and "I Don't Have To Try" isn't Runawaysish. But, you know, the Ted Nugent album is more fun.
Piracy Fun Terrorism
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You are a bad person; this is right up there with tolerating Heidi Montag.
No, I preferred the Celine version for a few days. That bit at the bridge where she gets up above the music and stays there is pretty undeniable. But then, that's more the music than Celine -- what I love about it is how it highlights the way the instruments are moving there, the way everything pauses and then pushes forward. Those guitars are determined, which is not something I thought guitars could be.
In both versions, that's the point where you start moving -- you're like, "I say yes to taking chances! Let's go!" But in the Celine version, it feels like I hit the ground running, I'm chasing after Celine; in the Kara version, Kara's grabbing me by the wrist and pulling me with her. It's a matter of personal preference, I guess, that the second is more appealing to me -- but then it also changes the song in a fundamental way, which I talked about back in the poptimist Celine post, and I haven't yet figured out what the song is about if it isn't grabbing you by the wrist.
I feel like I have something to say about Avril, but I don't know what it is yet.