Imogen Heap - Speak For Yourself
There's an irresistable charm to female-led electronica, particluarly the type that finds itself flitting in the vein of Bjork and Sarah McLaughlin. Its strange, completley baseless, and totally not the average alternative album you throw on when you want to express youself. But there's no denying that the effort is there. Heap actually mortgaged her London flat to finance the making of this record, and the go-for-broke attitude is evident. This record is produced within an inch of its life, sounds on top of sounds topped off with a gauzy candy-coated sheen that's, at times, too much to bear. Ornate baubles like "Clear the Area" and "The Walk" threaten to collapse under the weight of all their finery. Most of the tracks are a sticky-sweet conglomeration of piano and other sparking sounds-- synth air rushing in, Dopplered voices fading away. Sometimes these sounds are abetted by fuck-off guitars (like "Daylight Robbery") or big-beat drum machines (like "I Am In Love With You"). Invariably, most of the tracks find an ideal safe spot between the unrepentant Nelly Furtado-esque chirping of "Goodnight and Go" and the dreary yearning of "Just For Now".
And then there's Heap's voice, an ephemeral elastic thing that more often than not disappears into the music. It's hard to believe that someone executing these vocal gymnastics can also evaporate so easily. Sometimes, she gets lost within her own songs; sometimes, she gets lost within her own round-robin multi-tracking trickery. The pouting on "Daylight Robbery" is as loud as she gets, and even that's soft as silk. More often than not, the listener is caressed with whispers and sighs and innocuous vowels-as-words attached to lyrics that are often as airy as her vocals. Having said that, there's no reason why this album can't be the subject of a torrid aural love affair. Her ostentatiousness is endearing, if you can swallow both the musical and vocal flourishes. And when Heap's personality shines through all the trappings and inadvertent emulations (somewhere before the chorus in "Goodbye and Go", for example), it's a welcome breath of fresh air. And it's not like the songs are bad. They're just too much, and pity the fool with no patience for pretty frou frou stuff listening to any of this. The black sheep of the bunch, "Hide and Seek", best exemplifies the strengths and weaknesses of this album. The track consists of nothing but a Vocoder and her voice singing stuff about crop circles and sewing machines. It's gorgeous, it's impressive, it's grandiose, and it's barely there at all-- just Heap's voice darting and divebombing, making itself scarce, disappearing into itself.
There's an irresistable charm to female-led electronica, particluarly the type that finds itself flitting in the vein of Bjork and Sarah McLaughlin. Its strange, completley baseless, and totally not the average alternative album you throw on when you want to express youself. But there's no denying that the effort is there. Heap actually mortgaged her London flat to finance the making of this record, and the go-for-broke attitude is evident. This record is produced within an inch of its life, sounds on top of sounds topped off with a gauzy candy-coated sheen that's, at times, too much to bear. Ornate baubles like "Clear the Area" and "The Walk" threaten to collapse under the weight of all their finery. Most of the tracks are a sticky-sweet conglomeration of piano and other sparking sounds-- synth air rushing in, Dopplered voices fading away. Sometimes these sounds are abetted by fuck-off guitars (like "Daylight Robbery") or big-beat drum machines (like "I Am In Love With You"). Invariably, most of the tracks find an ideal safe spot between the unrepentant Nelly Furtado-esque chirping of "Goodnight and Go" and the dreary yearning of "Just For Now".
And then there's Heap's voice, an ephemeral elastic thing that more often than not disappears into the music. It's hard to believe that someone executing these vocal gymnastics can also evaporate so easily. Sometimes, she gets lost within her own songs; sometimes, she gets lost within her own round-robin multi-tracking trickery. The pouting on "Daylight Robbery" is as loud as she gets, and even that's soft as silk. More often than not, the listener is caressed with whispers and sighs and innocuous vowels-as-words attached to lyrics that are often as airy as her vocals. Having said that, there's no reason why this album can't be the subject of a torrid aural love affair. Her ostentatiousness is endearing, if you can swallow both the musical and vocal flourishes. And when Heap's personality shines through all the trappings and inadvertent emulations (somewhere before the chorus in "Goodbye and Go", for example), it's a welcome breath of fresh air. And it's not like the songs are bad. They're just too much, and pity the fool with no patience for pretty frou frou stuff listening to any of this. The black sheep of the bunch, "Hide and Seek", best exemplifies the strengths and weaknesses of this album. The track consists of nothing but a Vocoder and her voice singing stuff about crop circles and sewing machines. It's gorgeous, it's impressive, it's grandiose, and it's barely there at all-- just Heap's voice darting and divebombing, making itself scarce, disappearing into itself.
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