Livestock Roundup pt. 1: VeryVeroNekoNellieNOMO

time to take some Summer Stock – I've been going to a LOT of great shows lately. seeing some of my favorite artists, old and new, most of whom i'd never seen before. two of the most exciting, from last week, keith urban and taylor swift @ the wachovia center and kitty daisy and lewis @ kung fu necktie, i covered rather lengthily for the city paper blog (and will repost here soon enough.) the following i will try to run thru more quickly, but all were highly enjoyable shows...

The Veronicas @ the TLA, 7/17



Ah, the V's. The band that started it all for me, teen-pop wise. Preview'd 'em in CP, as i also did for Micachu – sweet virginny's Devon Sproule was also playing Philly (well, Ardmore) the same night, so it was pick yr precociously-talented young-twenty-something chicksinger nite (with three excellent options about as disparate as you could get), but I obviously had to go for these saucy Aussies, whom I'd been wanting to catch ever since they cancelled their slot on the Ashlee Simpson show I saw three whole years ago. This was, I believe, their first time back here since then, the "Revenge is Sweeter" tour, and I daresay they seem to be doing poor ol' Ash a few better these days; playing to a packed TLA vs. a tepid half-full E-Factory crowd (granted a much larger venue.)

it felt like the skinny gawky sexy kids party – like a bunch of high school seniors or something who are still kinda awky'n'scrawny, but at least they're the cool kids, revelling in the glory of youth and sex and angst and punk rock and gettin' naked. the video below captures the opening act, Carney, "pranking" the girls by running on stage, prancing around half-dressed (note the artfully nipple-hiding electrical-tape "V" for Veronicas) and grabbing instruments to play along with "Beautifully Broken" – that sort of sums up the spirit of the show: groping clumsily somewhere inbetween juvenile and erotic, but kind of cheekily infectious nevertheless.

the Origliassos made a visually pleasing sort of checker-pattern, with raven-tressed Lisa in a white slip/dress and peroxided Jess in a black one. they were very convincingly live and unaffected, and certainly earnest, giggling and chatting in an uninhibited, girly way – their story of how they decided "twitterhike" from new york with some fans (because there wasn't room on their tour bus?) was endearing if seemingly far-fetched. the band seemed pretty rad and young too, nice to see – at first i thought the drummer was an older, long-haired metal dude (who was inordinately into throwing his stick in the air), but later realized it was actually a girl, who seemed pretty bad-ass.

unfortunately, if predictably, the vocals weren't mixed nearly loud enough, which is particularly a problem for these guys – their vocals being basically the whole point – and I felt like it sapped a lot of the energy out of the show. anyway, they hit most of the hits, kicking right off with "untouched" – was disappointed that they did "this love" as an acoustic duet, even tho it was cool, since it meant no A-ha synth riff – but they skipped "when it all falls apart," which i was totally counting on as the closer. wasn't that their biggest mtv/radio hit in the states? (seemingly not, but why did i think that?) instead, they ended their main set with "4ever" (incl. the first of the mindblowing finale descant lines, but not the ultimate, closing one) and then encored with a breathless "this is how it feels," with more pandemonium and semi-nudity, and fans onstage, like the one who shot this video. would i have dug it more three years ago (when i would at least have wanted to push up to the front row)? yeah, probably so. come on baby, we can't make it last 4eva. still, better l8, 4shur.

Nellie McKay @ 92YTribeca
with Life in a Blender and Jesus H. Christ and the Four Hornsmen of the Apocalypse



Up to nyc for Ester's birthday, we just so happily happened across this fine $15 bill at the snazzy new 92YTribeca, which turned out to be quite a pleasant spot, with a particularly tasty and reasonably-priced (kosher) café. the first and last acts were both rather curious amalgamations who specialized "clever" (not-necessarily-funny) comedic material with a quasi-theatrical bent, both bolstered by strong horn sections. Life in a Blender (bad name; extra points off for making me think of Eve6) were notably the weaker of the two, at once quirkier and blander; the flat-out kooky JHCat4HotA were at least energetically entertaining: a motley crew including two burly bald brothers, a seriously sick black trumpeter/pianist, a girl who we variously described as "new jersey" or "sorority" type (also on trumpet), and a spazzy-neurotic frizzy-haired frontwoman (sorta reminiscent of Seinfeld's Elaine, but even nuttier, and with a preposterously unflattering dress) who spoke-sang nerdily obsessive and sorta dark joke-songs about sex and relationships and modernity. i liked "vampire girls" (with punkish "hot topic"-style pop-culture shout-outs) and "obviously" (...you slept with that girl from your reunion) and the goofily brazen "do me," and actually a lot of the songs were funny for at least the first verse-chorus or so, but not really enough to want to hear them more than once.

so, Nellie was the odd oddball out in the line-up, who stole the show, and all our hearts. actually, she seemed a bit more down to earth and with-it than previous times i've seen her, but she's still a lovable flouncy goof. she only did a couple of recognizable numbers from her albums – nothing from the debut, just "long & lazy river," "there you are in me," "food" and by-request encore "cupcake" from the second, and the razor-sharp "mother of pearl" (aka "feminists don't have a sense of humor") which i didn't know at the time is on her underlooked (er, by me) third – but there were one or two i recognized from past shows, and some cutesy newbies (thrift-shopper anthem "second-hand nell.")

about half the set, though, was vintage '30s/'40s-or-so covers, mostly done on ukulele, many taken from her forthcoming doris day tribute album (!!) which is gonna be awesome (she did a couple along with the finished backing tracks, thereby demonstrating her adorable incompetence at using a cd player), including "if i knew you were coming i'd have baked a cake," and "a-tisket a-tasket" and "broadway melody," which she did in an unreal quavery warble (you can listen to a similar performance of it here.) oh my oh my. here's hoping for a whiz-bang comeback soon soon soon!

The Very Best @ Le Poisson Rouge 7/18
with Dragons of Zynth



tromped across town for a very different sort of affair (fewer swatties, more sweatys), hotly anticipated by me and many. openers dragons of zynth were a lot more fun than i for some reason anticipated, a weird but workable combo of punk, funk, prog, synth-pop, and african polyrhythms, with anarcho/ethno-hipster style. they did some cover of a ghanaian song from the '60s that ben claimed he knew. towards the end they also did some aggressive/confrontational audience-diving, which was impressively intense, performance-wise, but didn't really fit the vibe. anyhoo.

the very best didn't come on until pretty ridiculously late, though i didn't much mind because the amp-up djs were playing some really killer stuff. the evening was already feeling kind of gleefully surreal (at atmosphere of freaky holiday?), partly because of these australians kept coming over to me and trying to talk to me (one of them in...norwegian?) because i was, apparently, the spitting image of their friend (i even danced like him.) once the band finally got on, the whole place just turned into even more of a berserk party, with everybody exuberantly dancing and waving their arms around.

there's not necessarily so much to their live performance – the radioclit dj guy, whichever one he was (there was only one of them there, so half of the duo), didn't seem to be doing a whole lot besides triggering the tracks – though towards the end of the set he made himself useful by pouring out little cups of bacardi and manischevitz (?!) to pass out into the crowd. esau mwamwaya seems like a total sweetie, with an infectiously giddy grin, but even if he didn't have much to offer in the way of showmanship (his english might not have been that good?) he was certainly singing his heart out, and his voice is a majestic thing indeed – in a way, their music is very simply all about the unbridled joyfulness of the singing. (as ben pointed out, the songs themselves are quite simple and similarly-structured.) the back-up singer had a broken leg, or something, but she sang along just as jubilantly. ezra koenig of vampire weekend turned up to sing his part on "warm heart of africa" (though not, unfortunately, to play the sample from their rework of "cape cod kwassa kwassa"), and he is such a chubby-faced cheery cherub, sooo cute!

meanwhile, they had a dancer going crazy all over the stage, shimmying and booty-shaking, rubbing her privates in audience members' faces, sometimes bringing folks up on stage to dance with her, and so on. all in all, it was a pretty crazy scene (even the cast-bound singer got up to hop around at one point), with lots of happiness all around – maybe not the very best musical performance i've seen in a minute, but without a doubt one of the very best parties.

more photos here and here.

[more coming soon, on Neko Case, Escort, and NOMO...also Taylor and Keith and Kitty, Daisy and Lewis... I just had to get this post finally up, several weeks late.]

top teen tunes!

[eta: here is a MixTube of all the songs discussed in this post. listen as you go!]

i picked up the veronicas' hook me up the other day (good ol' $2.99) and just listened to it again... it holds up very well, which makes me feel better about having written such a glowing review of it a year ago, despite the fact that i've barely listened to it since then. it is, in fact, a pretty great record. i'd forgotten about the how riled up some of us were getting at the time about the somewhat questionable girl-kissing references in "take me on the floor" (and also on skye sweetnam's contemporaneous "[maybe i should] kiss a girl")... little did we know then that that sh[l]ockstress katy perry would come steal that stale thunder and somehow warp it into 2008's most reviled, inanely 'zeitgeisty' pop inevitable.

anyhow, hook me up finally got a u.s. release this year - "untouched" even made it onto the p4k top 100 tracks list (which is notably ho-hum, but in a pleasant way; a low-key list for a low-key year.) not surprisingly the domestic version comes with a bonus track, advertised as such on the cover sticker (but not listed as a bonus): "goodbye to you", which i didn't realize until just now is a cover of a 1982 hit by scandal. hm. not sure what to say about that, since i don't really know anything about scandal. i do have the basic sense that they're not nearly as hip or worthy as tracy bonham, but what i do i know. (they did come from the magic decade, after all. and i suppose we owe them something for being the butt of all those lame patty smith/patti smyth jokes.)

i was gonna say that it's a sort of strange addition to the album, probably the lightest and frothiest thing on there - and an especially stark contrast to the high melodrama of the now-penultimate track "in another life" - generally pretty dispensable, although it's musically in keeping with the rest of the record. indeed it pretty much straight jacks the electro-candy groove from the title track, just sped up a bit. the verse melody is naggingly familiar ("solitary man"? "good riddance (time of your life)"?) but probably just generic; the most notable part is probably the silly squelchy synth solo, which nods almost undeniably to the organ solo from del shannon's "runaway," one of the greatest proto-teenpop hits (surely: who else would run away besides a teen or younger.) turns out that keyboard lick (and of course the melody) are also present in the original version too, so the v's didn't do a whole lot here worth noting except to revive the song for the benefit of weirdball birth control ads and fellow '80s-babies like me who missed out on it the first time. oh-kay.

speaking of teen-pop (because i haven't been, much this year at all), i wanted to mention a couple of my favorite recent jamzz, from artists who aren't quite so teen-centric (or, well, teen-aged) as they used to be, but have been showing a bit of that teeny-boppin' spark, more or less surprisingly.

the new beyoncé record has grown on me a fair amount - now i actually think the premise of splitting it into a ballad half and a banger half was a fairly smart or at least creative move (although it's still silly to split so little music onto two discs and call it an album), since they really are doing totally different things. no dispute that the ballad half is "better," more substantial and actually more engaging ("halo" in particular has been in my head a lot), but my favorite song on the whole package might be the entirely silly "radio."

it's a great and very fresh-feeling gooshy '08 club track production-wise - sounding, it must be said, a good deal like something we'd expect to hear from rihanna - but what makes it especially fun is how far it strays from typical beyoncé territory emotionally. it's beyoncé like we've maybe never heard her; not the mature, scorned-but-powerful icy-perfection goddess diva woman (though we get that again, a bit too explicitly so, in the next track), but an enthusiastic, excitable, slang-talking little kid.

i mean, who over the age of 16 would say something like "i think i'm in love with my radio/cuz it never lets me down." are there still people who actually feel that way? probably so (i hope so!), but the sentiment still feels decidedly like a throw-back, if not to the "golden age" of radio pop (um, whenever that was), at least to ll cool j c. 1985. i also just love the scene-setting opening stanza, in which she establishes her recent-to-current radio-rap cred, in highly un-beyonce-like fashion, by slurring "like erryday" and making sure she's rocking those stunna shades. it's totally preposterous, but in a very different direction from the way b is usually preposterous. and she totally hams it up - to hilarious effect, but at the same time it's an entirely convincing performance.

my favorite jam on the new taylor swift album isn't nearly so out of character for its artist (who after all is still a teen, and a full eight years younger than B), but it is striking for its highly teen-specific setting, as well as for its blissfully bountiful overabundance of melody (seriously, the song has like two-and-a-half separate choruses, and the verse melody is pretty catchy in its own right.) that's "you belong with me" - take a listen.

fearless has gotten a fair amount of ink for its 'maturity' - the song "fifteen" in particular, which does indeed seem like something that could be sung to a 15-year-old from somebody much wiser in years - but it's got plenty of youthful heart, and never more than on this track (the biggest standout for me, but that's probably just a quirk of what i happened to hear first, since plenty of the other songs seem like they're just as good.) "she wears short skirts, i wear t-shirts/she's cheer captain and i'm on the bleachers"... just says it all, no? [nb. "bleachers" rhymes with both "t-shirts" and "sneakers." that's some songwritin for ya.] and you have to love the snarkiness of "i'm listening to the kind of music she doesn't like." [eta: and check out the accompanying image in the cd booklet, taylor as bespectacled band dork while her beloved fawns over the ditzy hussy with her bra showing:

notice that taylor is wearing neither t-shirts nor sneakers in this image... also: "go, tiger"]

finally, the recently rather quiet paris hilton, whom i and others discussed under the umbrella of "teen-pop" back in '06 even though neither she nor her presumed audience were teen-aged, and her music had a pretty obvious adult slant, has released one of the most teeny-sounding songs in recent memory. (i wasn't at all sure she'd actually get back to making music at all, so this comes as a very pleasant surprise...new album due in 09!) from it's title on down, "my BFF" nods to classic late-90s/early-00s teen-pop. it makes me think, in particular, of toybox and aqua, though the whole max martin parade of poppettes could be invoked as well.

lyrically, unrepentantly g-rated - the conceit is basically the same as "is it you?", except that paris is looking for a friend, not a lover. (it is the theme song from her reality show, of the same premise.) a little silly coming from a 26-year old, ya know? musically too, it's squeaky-clean and peppy, eurodance-style kidpop. so wholesome you want to gag (and it's actually pretty catchy, which might make it better or worse.) and this is paris hilton we're talking about? good one girl.

mixtube: girlpop earworms '08

i was gonna do a post with embedded youtube video clips (as a low-hassle alternative to mp3-sharing) but then this came along: mixtube, an excellently-named successor to muxtape (r.i.p.), admirably resourceful and utilitarian-minded, which lets you create and share mux-styled playlists using the audio from any video on youtube. brilliant! (and seemingly relatively riaa-proof, though, we'll see...) (it's especially clever how there are no accounts associated with the playlists; if you want to revise a mix you've made, you don't log in to edit it, you simply make a new one "based on it.")

so here's my first stab, a guided tour through some of my favorite girlpop tracks these days. expect to see most of these show up on a forthcoming installment of ladies love (although one was already on the last one.)

cue it up and listen along!

i must say i haven't been bowled over by too many girl-pop songs this year; unlike '06 the year of synths and sirens (and heiress-pop) or '07 with its uk-chart and disco-soul retro-diva glut, the female artist i've been most excited about in '08 slings a ukelele and lives in my neighborhood (bertine zetlitz comes in a close second, but that was all back-catalog catch-up.) as the year draws toward a close (it's already half-past november - shocker! - and i'm feeling the itch to switch into critical-review mode), the big guns have started coming out of the woodwork (britney, xtina, beyonce, pink), and they've all been more or less misfiring, not so much spectacularly as perfunctorily.

meanwhile, perhaps the clearest contender for my favorite song of the year - if it counts - is cassie's "is it you?," which i first heard late last year. i liked it enough then to slot it first in my 07 year-end mix (which probably disqualifies it.) i still like it now, a hundred or so listens later, and it still hasn't even been released as a single (in this country - it went top ten u.k. r&b, which may not be very impressive), let alone on cassie's still-AWOL second album (the wiki article for which has apparently been deleted seven times in the last year.) it was on the step up 2 the streets soundtrack, which just so happened to launch the year's longest-running #1, a song ("low") which i enjoy a lot less than i enjoy the name of its artist (flo-rida).

"is it you?" was featured in the movie itself (which cassie starred in) over a montage sequence, although the shots of her character performing didn't make the final cut (you can see it as one of the dvd bonus features - which i highly recommend - and, of course, on youtube.) that version was just piano and vocals, featuring producer/rising star ryan leslie on the ivories, but i haven't been able to find an mp3 (or decent-quality youtube audio) of it. instead, this is the "piano version," which is only different for the first thirty seconds before the beat of the "normal version" butts in and it turns out more or less the same. beats me why this hasn't been a smash. maybe next year.

meanwhile, cassie's been doing other stuff - my favorite "new" song of hers is "official girl", which has a great slinky, fresh-sounding beat-displacement beat (can't wait to hear it in higher quality) produced by "danja.... and the.... clutch," as they inform us in probably my favorite producer-id bit ever (it's so cute!) i really like how the weirdly herky-jerky, rushed and overlapping vocal phrasing of the verses (it sounds like she's trying to squeeze in more words than quite fit) contrasts with the relatively languid, drawn-out delivery of the chorus ("i'm tired, i'm tired, i'm tired...") also, ultimatum/verbatim is a pretty sick/silly rhyme. lil wayne does nothing for this one...

another candidate for my fave song of the year is solange knowles' "sandcastle disco", which has, similarly, mysteriously failed to become a massive hit (while her big sister b is ruling the charts with so-so re-hashes of her past glories.) well, not so mysteriously in that it hasn't actually been released as a single yet, which is the only reason i can forgive the u.s. listening public (though i thought they weren't supposed to care about technicalities like that anymore.) literally every time i've played it for somebody they have been remarkably enthusiastic, so i know that it's not just me (it is possibly about a DJ, which might have swayed me a bit.) damn, just listen to it. how can you not swoon? [eta: according to wkpd it's not going to get a u.s. single release. d'oh! also, btw: evidently produced by danes soulshock and karlin, of "leave (get out)" fame, among other things.]

otherwise, the only new girl to really catch my ear lately has been jazmine sullivan, whose album i'm still digesting. it's not quite what you expect from '08 r&b, which in this case is a good thing. shades of jill scott c. 1999 - especially on the willie-hutch-sampling "my foolish heart" - which almost makes me feel old. "dream big" samples daft punk, which is getting obvious but it's in a quite different (and much less obnoxious) way than "stronger," if equally shameless. and the results are pretty irresistible. apparently the missy "suckas!" call-out is really part of the track?

madonna's album this year fell pretty flat (though i actually liked the single ok), but her long-since-eclipsed contemporary cyndi lauper put out a dance-pop album that was, in striking contrast, remarkably tasteful (not surprising) and remarkably decent (not sure), though also not as great as i'd hoped. i haven't decided yet whether i prefer her "lay me down," produced by kleerup, or his mostly-instrumental version of same, "thank you for nothing," allegedly so-titled in churlish response to cyndi not allowing her vocals to appear on his album. anyway, i think "echo" is my favorite track - sleek minimal glide, not too much going on, but lush and lovely nonetheless, and kinda funky.

my hands-down favorite girl/pop full-length of the year, though, was the almost entirely overlooked debut by cloetta paris, which continues to impress and delight me. she deserves a full post later on, but check out "broken heart tango" if you haven't heard her yet.

i've still got some more 2008 to sift through (including the new taylor swift), but apart from a few outliers like ashlee simpson's "boys" and rihanna's "disturbia" - and let's not forget "no air" and "shorty get loose" - that's about the best of it so far. pretty slim pickings indeed. man, what happened this year?

i'll finish up with a few songs from 2007 have been worming their way back around to my brain lately. i never really gave much of an ear to "bottoms up" when i was first listening to keke palmer's album last year, but it is pretty great. big stupid electro crunk'n'b dance jam, with finger-snaps and tweety tweets, an awesome/unfortunate semi-entendre of a title, a rotating parade of quasi-referential hooks, and an utterly charismatic vocal performance from miss keke p. i love her little kelis impression. (completely with MIMS-esque arrangement-quote.) i heard it at a basketball game last week, strangely enough, as part of the half-time cheerleader-dance medley, which also included a mash-up of pink's "so what" (already?) with rihanna's "s.o.s." (i hope it's called "s.o. what." oh, yes, it is.)

i've probably talked about the veronica's "this love" before, but it's been in my head and i thought i'd air it again. apparently their album actually came out here a little while ago, not that anyone noticed (but good because it means i will find a used copy eventually.) this one is pretty near perfect. it pops, it rocks, it dances. and it's way sentimental - and sure, completely melodramatic - but it's damn effective. still tears me up a little, particularly when the v's actually show a bit of vocal restraint on the a capella bits. and the "take on me" snatch at the end is just inspired.

dragonette made an album last year that just came out here, and which i've been listening to a bunch. i'll have more to say later, like that you should probably watch the "take it like a man"
video, which requires some forewarning but is actually much tamer than the song itself.

in the mean time, enjoy the title track from marit larsen's new album, the chase, which i'll get around to reviewing one of these days...

selling insights by the word (6¢ apiece)

...and now that i've weighed in on the ark, robyn's self-titled magnum opus is just about the only Pop album of the last few years that i absolutely adore, scandinavian or otherwise, which i haven't written about for amg. (though that's about to change.) it's been an immensely enjoyable process, though, as i say, a slow and painstaking one, since i seem to be compelled to explore and reconsider each album i review, even those i know and love intimately, to come up with at least one new nugget of insight - and in some cases it has substantially transformed my understanding of these albums.

so here's a round-up of some of what i have written there so far - call it round-up round one - with links to some of my favorite reviews and bios with excerpts that hopefully convey some of the insights i've gleaned. in the order i wrote them:

Margaret Berger: bio, Chameleon and Pretty Scary Silver Fairy reviews

Margaret Berger (or "Marble," as she introduces herself to us) reportedly wished her album to be "sweet but mean at the same time" -- hence the "pretty" and "scary" of the title -- a description that resonates with the balance she strikes between tones of innocence and experience. As befits a set of songs written by a 21-year-old reflecting back on her teenage years, these tunes convey a sense of carefree, youthful hope and boundless optimism that's often tempered (though never too harshly) by a more complex, knowing nostalgia.

[...] Recordings from her [Norwegian] Idol stint, as well as many tracks from her debut, reveal her to be a remarkably soulful, full-throated singer, but for the bulk of Fairy she modulates her voice into a more modest instrument. Not that it sounds thin or lacking in personality: although it would have been interesting to hear a song like "Get Physical," for instance, with a more commanding, emotive delivery, a simpler and sweeter approach is probably more germane to this mode of somewhat icy electro-pop; it also accentuates the mood of playful innocence. That Berger evidently chose to downplay her vocal abilities for the sake of constructing a sonically and thematically unified album is in itself a strong indication of her refined sense of pop craftsmanship.

Amy Diamond: bio, This Is Me Now and Still Me, Still Now reviews

Amy Diamond's tricky. She was a young teenager when this debut album was released -- a preteen, in fact, when some of it was recorded (though you'll have a hard time believing that when you hear her big brassy voice; and the cover photo makes it look like she's about six.) But her recordings are certainly more sophisticated than you would typically expect of "children's music." And - unlike the bulk of pop made by (and for) teenagers - neither do they attempt to mimic the forms and themes of "adult" pop, at least not in the familiar manner of teen-centric rock, R&B, and dance-pop. In that sense, Diamond isn't pretending to be something that she's not -- but it's still remarkably hard to determine who, exactly, she is, the album title notwithstanding: This Is Me Now may be chock-full of personality in a musical sense, but it's bizarrely lacking in identity.

Richard X: bio and Presents His X-Factor review

"The best album in the world ever! Massive tunes! All the biggest stars! All the biggest hits!" So proclaims voice-over artist and former BBC DJ Mark Goodier partway through producer/mash-up pioneer Richard X's sprawling spectacle of a debut album. It's a joke -- obviously -- and a decent indication of the cheeky, lighthearted tone with which X constructs his reverently irreverent recombinant electro-pop. But it's not hard to take the suggestion at least a little bit seriously, particularly slotted as it is just before one of the most genuinely "massive" tunes of the early 2000s (in Britain, that is): the Adina Howard/Gary Numan frisson-collision "Freak Like Me," which began its (bastard) life as a bootleg 7" on X's Black Melody imprint (as "We Don't Give a Damn About Our Friends," recorded under the name Girls on Top), before it was re-recorded by the Sugababes and debuted at number one on the U.K. singles chart.

Sway: bio, This Is My Demo and One For the Journey reviews

This debut album, which followed two rounds of "This Is My Promo" mixtapes, displays him as a fully formed and formidable talent: self-conscious and introspective (that much should be evident from his album titles), but never tediously chin-stroking or esoteric; delightfully witty and droll but almost always with a well-considered underlying message; streetwise but hardly thuggish; linguistically nimble but not ostentatious; decidedly English in rhetoric, references, and voice, but distinctive enough, and with enough sheer unqualified charisma, to transcend genre and geographic boundaries. Indeed, Sway strikes such a well-positioned balance between so many poles and potential pitfalls, offering a little something to appeal to almost any potential listener, that you'd expect him to come off as overly calculated. On the contrary, though, his casual, almost tossed-off earnestness is quintessential to his charm.

Minor Majority: bio and Candy Store review

Minor Majority's musical m.o. -- elegant, intimate, acoustic folk-pop -- remained virtually unchanged between their 2001 debut release and this 2007 compilation...the group swelled from a duo to a quintet over that period, so their more recent work is somewhat more fleshed out, or at least more likely to include drums; they've also picked up a bit of studio polish along the way.

[...] Like their similarly hushed countrymen Kings of Convenience, Sweden's Nicolai Dunger (circa Tranquil Isolation), and Iceland's Funerals, they manage to assimilate a distinctly American strain of rootsy melancholia into a style that only subtly hints at their Scandinavian origin.

The Veronicas: Hook Me Up review

The Veronicas -- who seem to be in control of their own career to an impressive extent for a pair of 22-year-old girls -- are the rare teen pop act for whom visual presentation is almost entirely incidental. (Note, for instance, that they haven't appeared on either of their album covers -- which is practically unheard of in teen pop -- and they're 22-year-old identical twin sisters.)

In fact, this album's glistening electronic trappings -- besides being enjoyable in their own right -- only serve to enhance the integrity of the Veronicas' aesthetic by elucidating the grand driving tension at the heart of confessional teen pop: the juxtaposition of adolescent angst with pop's transcendent sweetness.

Skye Sweetnam: Sound Soldier review

Since she first emerged in 2003 with the teenage rebellion anthem "Billy S." (probably the only song in history to contain a shout of unabashed glee about how much teachers get paid), self-described bubblegum brainiac Skye Sweetnam has toured summer camps, clubs, and stadiums (as Britney Spears' opening act) in support of her debut album Noise from the Basement; contributed her voice to The Barbie Diaries and her songs to The Sims; turned 16, 17, 18, and 19; emphatically protested the inescapable comparisons to fellow Canadian punk-tart Avril Lavigne (in Basement's "Hypocrite" she ironically refers to herself as "Avril-lite"; at one point her guitar sported an "Anti-Matrix sticker in reference to Lavigne's notorious production team), and amassed a reported seventy songs in preparation for her follow-up album with collaborators in Toronto, Los Angeles, and Sweden. In 2007 -- the same year that Lavigne unveiled a newly spunky, playful attitude and gaudy fashion sense noticeably similar to Sweetnam's own, and scored the first rock number one in six years with a song ("Girlfriend") highly reminiscent of her bratty, cheerleader punk-pop -- Sweetnam finally emerged with her second album (it had been delayed for well over a year since its originally scheduled release date), which turned out to have been produced and co-written predominantly by the self-same Matrix with whom Lavigne found her initial success. Such is life in the topsy-turvy, high-stakes, and jet-setting world of rock-based teen pop.

Tunng: This Is Tunng..., Comments of the Inner Chorus, Pioneers, and Magpie Bites reviews

"If it can be broke then it can be fixed/if it can be fused than it can be split" - it reads like a mission statement for resourceful sonic collage artists Tunng, who have built their career on breaking genre boundaries by fusing traditionalist acoustic folk with spluttering electronics...

It's a style that finds clear parallels in the work of New England's the Books -- in particular, the intermittent found-sound snippets and spoken word samples (that's Allen Ginsberg and Gregory Corso reading from their poetry in "Out the Window with the Window") make that connection unmistakable -but has few other obvious comparisons. Which doesn't mean it's hard to classify: indeed, the genre tag "folktronica," which had entered into general usage several years before Tunng's emergence, never had a more apt referent"

Marit Larsen: Under the Surface review

Her distinctive writerly voice encompasses both a sprightly playfulness and a self-consciously mature anxiety, as reflected in her penchant for outsized, almost bombastically melodic choruses tempered by more tentative, delicate verses. After the brief, sweetly understated preamble of "In Came the Light," the title tune rushes in with a frenzied swirl of schmaltzy, Disney-esque strings and bells, but its romantic exuberance is swiftly undercut by a yearning verse melody and a narrator so enraptured and yet so wracked by jealous doubt that she can barely even stand her lover's presence. This sort of crippling insecurity crops up repeatedly -- in the self-effacing unrequited lover/loner of "Recent Illusion," and the snooping, paranoid housewife of "This Time Tomorrow," a jangly waltz whose awkward second-person perspective and forced, unconvincing premise make it the album's sole lyrical weak link. In each case, it's made achingly more poignant by Larsen's resonant delivery -- there's so much warmth and sweetness in her voice that even in her most forlorn moments you can practically hear a smile determined to break through the pathos.

Rachel Stevens: Come and Get It review

Come and Get It is a marvel of pure pop craftsmanship, boasting inventive, fresh, engrossingly detailed productions, gorgeously layered vocals and synths, huge hooks, and infectious melodies... Especially in light of its lackluster reception, it comes across as a true labor of love, painstakingly constructed by and for discerning pop true believers, and destined for future pop cult enshrinement. With all this talk of craftsmanship, and all the talent that's on display, it's deceptively easy to overlook Rachel Stevens' role in all of this, to write her off as little more than a faceless, er, pretty face. And it's true that she doesn't present any sort of cohesive persona here, but that's due less to lack of charisma than to her conscious, consummate chameleonism, her own strongest point as a master pop stylist.

If this album offers us a glimpse of the "real" Rachel Stevens, it might very well be in its final track, the rather archly titled "Dumb Dumb," which belies its generic clubland groove with a ruminative third-person account of a gold-hearted, secretly despondent pinup who "sacrificed her image for her beauty." That's pure speculation of course, but it's hard to imagine Stevens tripping through the pop-star merry-go-round as she has, garnering such conspicuous potential and such compromised fulfillment, without picking up at least a touch of world-weary resignation.

Bertïne Zetlïtz: Rollerskating review

The album artwork depicts the glassy-eyed, nordicly stunning Zetlïtz wandering through a deep, dark, verdant forest improbably populated with cartoon bats, a man made out of vines, and an eerily illuminated slot machine. It's a bizarre, arresting series of images, aptly suited to the album's evocative if often inscrutable lyrics, whose dreamlike lucidity is also well captured in Zetlitz's dulcet but detached delivery. References abound to candy, butterflies, rollercoasters, and the like - but their sweetness is undercut by frequent allusions to guns, drugs, obsession, and all manner of emotional fragility and frigidity. Even the seeming reassurance of the stately, heartbreakingly poignant ballads "If You Were Mine" and "Broken" is couched in often disconcerting imagery ("it occurred to me you might be injured/cause my dress got stained from your touch.")