Janelle Monae

i'll be your secret santa
do you mind

either what she does at 2:13 in "Come Alive" (and for 20 seconds afterward) is stitched together or she is genuinely scary

im glad the lyrics arent all story-related either. that would be pretty dull and lead to boredom/decreased replay value fast. songs after repeated listens def arent terrible, just not that memorable either. and the afrobeat track with saul is still too early, and also, a bit weak rhythmically/sonically imo, but then i thought the same when common tried to do afrobeat.

i know, that come alive scream thing- for a couple of listens i thought it was some kind of effect with guitar, but now im thinking its genuinely scary. xpost

after watching her live performance on Letterman, I'm pretty sure that's her with some slight effect on her vocal line to beef it up

just watched the letterman performance for the first time. it was good. though she didnt need to quote JB lines near the end. great performance though the song didnt quite conclude how id have liked.

listened to the first 17 songs this morning. i was hoping for a complete mess, or a noble failure, or a case of unfortunate overreach, but this is surprisingly flat and one of the only albums i've heard where i'm on like track 16 and saying to myself "really? that's it?"

she's not a v. developed songwriter and her spot-the-influence approach is boring. but mostly i think the production is really disappointing--this was a great opportunity to make a cool live band record and it just doesn't breathe at all.

i don't even dislike it really, just feeling kinda neutral which is mad unfortunate for an album like this.

^^this is how i felt

preordered this on vinyl, fuck the haters

My issue with the album is that it desperately tries to slam you in the face with immediate awesomeness, but it is actually a slowburner. I thought it was a decent try but nothing particularly special the first few times I played it, but because it was new and enjoyable I kept giving it spins; the more I played it, the more I liked it.

It is rapidly approaching being one of my favorite albums of the year but the steep curve it traversed while settling into that position is going to turn off a large number of people (as evidenced by this thread, IMO). I don't know, maybe it's a little too self-satisfied/inward-looking to properly reach out to people, at least in the way they expect from something under the R&B umbrella? (ie, no one is going to complain about Portishead navel-gazing all over Third because that's kind of why you buy Portishead albums; they are pulling you into their little world and blowing your mind on their terms, whereas most R&B/hip-hop seems to move along the axis of blaring out into your world and taking it over, so maybe something like this that is so determinedly inward-looking with all of these normally outward-facing signifiers is confounding people because the two approaches cancel each other out and you're left with something that comes across more clinical than you think it should be? Kind of making up stuff here but maybe that's part of what's happening when people listen to this?)

well it does feel clinical. but i guess i'm not sure what she thinks she's going for.

ya i was gonna say, this one did take me a few spins to start to dig

I would say that I like this about as much as the last Portishead album.

...

I still like the last Portishead album more.

i guess i should give this some more listens then, my first couple times through it seemed really labored and unfun

I am going to take advantage of the Portishead mention, to say that I keep thinking I would like a lot of trip-hop much more if Janelle Monae were doing the vocals.

I think there's a soundtracky quality to much of it that is intentional, but that might be part of what's turning people off. Maybe it creates a slight sense of removal?

It is an emotion picture, you know.

I wonder how much sense it makes to advertise this album with "Tightrope." That track alone doesn't provide much sense of what the album is like and might not pull in people who would like the album overall; on the other hand, people hoping the whole album would be more along the lines of "Tightrope" could end up disappointed. But would any other track here make a better single? Probably not (though maybe a slightly re-worked radio/single version would work in some cases).

i can't believe i'm saying it but i would support this album being more concept-y

songs I think of as "singles":

Tightrope (duh)
Cold War
Wonderland
Dance or Die
Locked Inside
Oh, Maker
Neon Valley Street

Tightrope feels like it belongs on another album, yes; but it's still far and away my fave track on the album. Maybe it should've been on Big Boi's album instead?

I think it works fine on the ArchAndroid, I just don't think it's representative of the sound and feel of the album overall.

its not even close to my fav track on this album

'say youll go' has really grown on me. i enjoy how straight she sings the body of it. i wouldn't say its restrained, but it could have been ruined by a heavier interpretation.

production could def have been liver or just a bit tougher in general i think. sounds quite pro tooled in places.

usually i hate when titchy gets voodoo--technical--aspie w/ his criticisms but he might be kinda right here

I've listened to this twice. Always starts very exciting but everything starts to blur after a while? I think it's maybe Janelle's technically well-done but emotionally blank vocals that makes this a "challenging" listen for me (at this stage at any rate), much more than the arrangements which mostly seem pretty gregarious and outgoing and fun.

"emotionally blank vocals"

yes. although, what a voice.

Yeah the voice is amazing, but there's no real sense of an actual person behind it (and this has zero to do with the whole android thing). I had the same stumbling block with her earlier material. It reminds me somewhat of Kelis's "Little Suzie", a tune which I always felt I should love more than I did.

"sense of an actual person behind it"

oh, that's usually a lie anyway.

I know, but it's a pretty important lie in R&B!

I don't mean "who is Janelle Monae really", but rather that her vocals usually don't make me care about the singer, the character-of-the-song.

i was gonna say, i get a really strong sense of a person, but more in the "who is janelle monáe really" sense than the emotional-character-of-the-song. god i'm going to have to listen to this again, i have to write a review but as much as i listen to it nothing is sticking AT ALL and it feels more and more like a slog each time

Actually that's a good point, I do come away with a strong sense of "Janelle Monae" herself - something about the whole effect sharply delineates the meta-auteur-behind-the-curtain while leaving any specific characterisation kinda vague... I don't know if this is a bad thing necessarily! It's just a thing perhaps.

It sounds like people would be better off not listening to this so much as an R&B album.

it sounds more like people would be better off listening to everything as an r&b album.

?

x-post

Not that I'm conceding on the "emotionally cold vocals," I need to think about that. I think I know what is being talked about (there is a fair amount of distance built into the feel of this album), but I find some of the singing here quite moving.

I don't think Janelle is emotionally blank on any of the ballads or "Come Alive"; at a bare minimum

(Sorry, "emotionally blank" not "emotionally cold.")

Lex I'm surprised you're so down on this while in favour of the Cibelle album, which feels like as much of a look-at-me! slog to me. Is it just that Janelle is carrying the baggage of being ostensibly an rnb singer?

um the whole appeal is totally about her being a performer -- its theater kid stuff of course you dont get an idea of THE REAL JANELLE MONAE thats not always the pt & this is rtc&bROCKISM

Performers can't project Monae's blankness though; at her worst she's like one of the Sparkle Motion kids.

u are wayyyy overstating her supposed lack of personality with 'blankness'

um the whole appeal is totally about her being a performer -- its theater kid stuff of course you dont get an idea of THE REAL JANELLE MONAE thats not always the pt & this is rtc&bROCKISM

My argument would be the opposite of this actually deej. I totally get an idea of the Real Janelle Monae but her vocal style is simply not one which (for want of a better term) "manufactures emotion" very much. She's the opposite of a Fantasia or a Jazmine Sullivan in this regard.

I don't think she's Sparkle Motion-like at all.

On "Come Alive" and "Tightrope" she sounds to my ears like someone grimly determined to give you a good time, rictus grin, dance contortions and all; and just when you think she's exhausted you she introduces special guests Of Montreal. The thing is structured like a variety show: moments of fun and virtuosity, but wearying.

Pffffffffffffffffffffffft.

(I thought I would elevate the level of discourse a little.)

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