In the age of the pop chanteuse, Grimes is having her cake and eating it too. She kicks out populist club bangers for the kids, to be sure, but she also hits the zeitgeist with imaginative pop music that will forever sound like 2015 and beyond. Uncompromising and accessible, Art Angels is a genreless album that touches on EDM, pop, punk, country, rock, and shoegaze while capturing the exuberance of youth culture in one fell swoop. Grimes is basically Taylor Swift on crack, seeking only to drill through your skull and find your pleasure cortex.
Fortunately, Claire Boucher's leap to the big stage does not require dumbing down her experimental, electro-pop tendencies. Though almost each track can pass for a mega-hit on radio or every other streaming service, her music brims with unfiltered ideas and impulses. Boucher's production skills are superb, edgy and intuitive, but may be surpassed by her ear for unstoppable hooks. As a result, she retains aesthetic credibility in ways that Ariana Grande and countless others can only dream about, chasing down euphoric pop moments without abandoning her independent spirit or, worse, succumbing to ubiquitous and boring club beats.
I have listened to this album incessantly at the gym. I am the only dude in the joint grooving to the 27 year-old Canadian's jams, no doubt. But when you bench as much as The D Man, you can listen to whoever you want. It's 2015, yo!
2 comments:
I'm going to try to give this album another chance. The track you posted is pretty groovy. That voice though . . .
Ha! It's a little more spastic than Mayberry's, for example, but may be more versatile. She can sing. It's a great pop album, teeming with cool tracks.
Post a Comment