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Pop Rock Nation

Category: Reviews

music-and-concert-reviews-you-wont-see-anywhere-else

  • New Music Revue: Robyn’s Back and It’s Almost Worth the 10 Year Wait

    A few months ago, I gave Robyn some serious props on this very site. The Swedish singer had just released The Rakamonie EP, a teaser of sorts for her first American album in over a decade. The full-length finally arrived on American shores a little over a month ago, and it’s certainly well worth the wait.

    Robyn's new self-titled release is in stores and online now.

    For those that need catching up, Robyn was the bridge between the “urban” teenage girl singer wave of 1994-1995 (Monica, Aaliyah, and Brandy) and the “pop” teenage girl singer wave of 1998-1999 (Britney, Christina, Jessica). Hits like “Show Me Love” and “Do You Know (What it Takes)” were frothy and poppy (are Scandinavians born with a gene that allows them to make hooky pop songs?), but Robyn’s singing voice was powerful enough to give her some R&B respect. Her debut album, “Robyn is Here”, was successful enough, eventually selling a million copies. However, about a year and a half after Robyn’s debut album was released, Jive Records put out Britney Spears’ debut, and Robyn was promptly forgotten about. If you get similar songs and give them to a pretty but talented cipher who’s willing to sing them while prancing around half-naked, why take a chance with someone who might exert a little artistic tension?

    Anyway, Robyn retreated from the American music scene as quickly as she’d gotten there, returning to her homeland and releasing music that was well-received throughout Europe but never released in the States. A song called “Konichiwa Bitches” got some indie/hipster love about three years ago, and it set the stage for Robyn’s return as a slightly edgier, but still pop-friendly American recording artist. “Robyn” is actually a compilation of sorts, mixing new cuts with songs that have been out abroad for a couple of years, but it still holds together as a cohesive album. Think of it as “FutureSex/LoveSounds”, only with balls.

    “Balls” is the operative word here, as Robyn spends a great deal of this album talking shit to the opposite sex. The aforementioned “Konichiwa Bitches” is the greatest Missy Elliott song Missy Elliott never made, with Robyn rapping playfully about how hot she is: “Right now you’re probably thinking ‘how she get in them jeans’/Well I’m gifted, all natural and bursting at the seams”. It’s full of attitude, but you get the impression that Robyn’s just having fun with it. “Handle Me” sounds a bit like the Ne-Yo/Stargate/”Irreplaceable” sound that’s infiltrated the radio over the past two years, but Robyn’s emasculating lyrics have a bit more bite than Beyonce’s (wait, she didn’t write that one).

    “Be Mine” proves that a great melody is a great melody, whether performed as a more upbeat dance/pop tune (like on this album) or a somber piano ballad (like on the aforementioned EP). “Crash & Burn Girl” is a heater guaranteed to light up dance floors worldwide and also finds Robyn rocking a very Prince-like falsetto, and “Anytime You Like” is an ethereal beat ballad that sounds strangely sensual, considering she’s singing about a breakup. Guess that’s something else she learned from the Purple One.

    Not quite sure why the hipster crowd has latched on to this album-it pretty much defines what pop is right now. It’s danceable, youthful and fun, and manages to take everything artists like Fergie and Gwen Stefani try to do and do it correctly. If you remember Robyn’s first American album fondly, it’s probably time to head down to ye olde record store and welcome back an old friend. If you’re only hearing of Robyn for the first time and want to hear some quality pop music, pick this one up and thank me later.

  • Memory Bliss: P.M. Dawn

    (I guess I should also thank them for providing the name of this column.)

    To most folks, the duo of P.M. Dawn were but a blip on the radar screen of music. If you remember them, you do for one of several reasons:

    *A couple of their major hits used fairly obvious samples of major pop hits – Set Adrift on Memory Bliss sampled Spandau Ballet’s True and Looking Through Patient Eyes relied heavily on George Michael’s Father Figure (Michael returned the favor by allowing them to remix his 1993 mashup of Seal’s Killer with The Temptations’ Papa Was a Rolling Stone). This was a few years before Puff Daddy made wholesale jacking cool and at least PM Dawn had the talent to structure new melodies and choruses out of the pre-existing songs.

    *Prince Be (Attrell Cordes, the duo’s rapping half) was a big dude.

    *KRS-ONE notoriously tossed Be off a stage at a 1992 party for MTV’s T-Money in retaliation for a comment made in Details magazine (“KRS-ONE says he is a teacher, but a teacher of what?”)

    However, a simple listen to P.M. Dawn’s music reveals an adventurous spirit and an ear for melody that goes far beyond the reach of the average hip-hop act and even reaches beyond most pop acts. Be wasn’t a bad emcee, but he was just as good-if not better-as a singer. Even if his reposeful vocal stylings (he was like a hip-hop Bob Ross, utilizing a sleepy near-monotone when rapping that got slightly more animated when singing) didn’t sit well with you, songs like 1995’s Downtown Venus , 1992’s I’d Die Without You (one of the decade’s best songs, unjustly buried on the soundtrack to the Eddie Murphy flick Boomerang) and 1993’s More Than Likely (a ballsy duet with Boy George) proved him to be a very good pop craftsman, even if his stuff was just a little too left-of-center to keep the duo in the mainstream limelight.

    The duo (Attrell’s little brother Jarrett served as the duo’s DJ) recorded four increasingly interesting albums over an eight year period, culminating in the truly bizarre semi-concept father-to-son album Dearest Christian, I’m So Very Sorry for Bringing You Here, Love Dad. As weird as the concept is, it’s an excellent pop album, with a chilled out tone that presaged (and would fit perfectly next to) acts like Zero 7.

    While I think only a Greatest Hits album is available on record store shelves these days, their entire four album discography is available digitally, and the New Jersey-based Prince Be still performs across the country, most recently opening for fellow 90s sensations Boyz II Men. Not sure whether any new music is on the horizon, but PM Dawn’s pop smarts and experimental leanings made them one of the best artists you weren’t paying attention to (at least beyond their hits) during the decade.

     

    (The video for “I’d Die Without You”, one of the best singles of the Nineties)

    1995’s Fantasia’s Confidential Ghetto is an extremely weird mashup of Prince’s 1999, Once in a Lifetime by The Talking Heads, and Harry Nilsson’s Coconut. Whoever thought of jamming these songs together deserves a medal of some sort.

    “I’ll Be Waiting for You” is from the same album (1995’s “Jesus Wept”)…good stuff.

  • Journey to the Discotheque Vol. 1: 10 Song Shuffle

    Last weekend I was at a family get-together. Somewhere along the way MP3 players became a popular topic, which caused my dad to pose the immortal question, “Who the hell cares what’s on my iPod?” Now chances are pretty good if you’re reading a music blog you already know the answer to that, but pretending that you don’t since I can’t think of any other way to open this up: it’s because it allows you to know a person without actually knowing them.

    For example, if your iPod is loaded with songs from Type O Negative, Burzum and Scandinavian death metal sensation Vordghackf, it means you have you several pentagrams carved into your arm, like to write overlong and half-racist internet dissertations on why “rap music” sucks, and it’s only a matter of time before you shoot up the post office you’re inevitably working for. If your iPod is loaded with songs from George Jones, Daddy Yankee and Godsmack, it means you’re going through a mid-life crisis and can’t decide whether you want to want to embrace a conservative adulthood or put up the façade that you’re twenty years-old again, ‘cos god forbid that you should accept your age and move on. Finally, if your iPod is loaded with nothing but Ani DiFranco, it means you’re one of those feminist types with a butch haircut, lots of beads and a huge ass (stolen courtesy of “That’s My Bush!”).

    (more…)