Nails shine like Christmas

Continuing my trip forward in time through the album charts

22/07/22 : About Last Night... - Mabel


I can't claim to be the biggest Mabel expert (I know she's Neneh's kid and that's about it), but I've quite liked the singles I've heard so have no concerns going into this.

And yeah, it's not bad at all if you like that sort of thing (and I dol).  The way I look at it is, if you've got a successful formula, then why not stick with it?  Some people might quibble that it's Dua Lipa's successful formula (particularly on "Let Them Know") or Robyn's ("I Love Your Girl") but I think there's room for Mabel in that space as well.  Yes, I'm being slightly unfair - I liked this, although I did think the production was surprisingly flat in places and some tracks do sound like some auto-tuning has been going on which, as far as I'm aware, isn't required so I'm not sure what's going on.  I can't say the album's quite good enough to drag me away from Future Nostalgia, but I enjoyed it nonetheless.

We're at #2 in the charts with a new entry again - it feels like Harry will be at the top for a bit yet.  It's a strong week for new entries from the ladies with Beabadoobee at #4 and Lizzo at #6 - and I may well check them both out (I did check out Beabadoobee - I liked it, the youngest described it as depressing).  

Wikipedia doesn't have an awful lot on the album beyond some very strange critical comments - one of them said the album does not "add much of value beyond what we hear".  Sorry - what does that even mean?  I have less argument with the comment that it's "smothered under the weight of generic, radio-pandering production" - it's unusual for me to even notice the production, so it does feel to me like they could have put more effort in (or maybe less effort was what was required).  They are a lot of people involved in this album though - a LOT!

"Customers also listened to" some most excellently titled albums - Twinkle Twinkle Little Bitch by Leah Kate, Holy Fvck by Demi Lovato and emails i can't send by Sabrina Carpenter.  None of which I've ever listened to, but I'm struggling to resist the first one. Back to Mabel, despite my production quibbles, this is a fine album.  It's derivative, but a well done derivative album is still a well done album - and this is.

15/07/22 - Surprisingly enjoyable
29/07/22 - I'm not sure I understand why

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

I saw your mum - she forgot that I existed

Image
Continuing my trip forward in time through the album charts 22/12/23 :  Stick Season - Noah Kahan Well, this week surprises us on a couple of fronts.  Firstly, and probably the least expected, this is possibly the album I've heard most this year - because obviously I'm a massive Noah fan. Well, it might not surprise you to hear it's not me but my delightful daughter - but you might be surprised to hear just how much my youngest absolutely LOVES Noah, particularly given his folkiness.  She's got tickets to see him next year and (excluding festivals) they're the most expensive gig tickets I've ever bought.  But despite having heard the album loads, I've never actually listened to it, so I'm interested to see what I make of it on a one-on-one basis. You know what - the headline is that, having actually listened to it I can report that, at least in places, I liked this way more than I previously did.  I listened to it over headphones for the first time and t
Read more

She's got a wicked way of acting like St. Anthony

Image
I've done The Guardian's list of the top 50 albums of the year for the last three years and (mostly) enjoyed it, so here we go again with this year's list .  Last year I'd previously met ten of the list - it will be interesting to see whether that is repeated this year.   #50 : Crazymad, For Me - CMAT Coming off halfway between Jenny Lewis and Self Esteem, Dublin’s CMAT sets life’s greatest embarrassments to ritzy country showstoppers – the musical equivalent of piling your beehive high to distract from your tear-reddened eyes. On her second album, she tots up the price she has paid for her bad boyfriends, self-subjugation and knowing avoidance of less-than-romantic realities, always with mordant humour rather than self-pity: “I’m just some stewardess who feeds your pets / And does your dishes and pays your rent,” she sings on the delicate, harmony-heavy Such a Miranda. For all that she has lost in these songs – pride, love, literal cash – her perspective remains a firm
Read more

Croopied in the reames, shepherd gurrel weaves

Image
Continuing my trip down The Guardian's   top 50 albums of 2023 #30 : The Age Of Pleasure - Janelle Monáe Monáe’s last album, 2018’s Dirty Computer, saw the high-concept pop star returning to earth after several albums of space-age fantasia, showing a softer, fallible side for the rest time. Its songs were still divided into three categories – Reckoning, Celebration and Reclamation – indicating an artist who hadn’t quite let go of the structural safety rails. But on The Age of Pleasure, Monáe is resolutely grounded in pursuit of a new kind of body high. To the decadently rendered diasporic sounds of reggae, dancehall and Afrobeats, she hymns pleasure and desire, connecting (as did Jessie Ware also did this year) sex as self-empowerment and celebrating the kaleidoscopic nature of identity. Or, as she puts it on Phenomenal: “I’m lookin’ at a thousand versions of myself / And we’re all fine as fuck.” I have experienced a couple of Janelle albums and I found them somewhat inaccessible -
Read more