Katy B - On A Mission (4 April 2011) - hype, anticipation &c

so yeah this blue eyes song kind of reminds me in parts of sweet female attitude's "flowers" which is about the highest compliment i can pay anything

yes! my initial thought when listening to it was of the artful dodger mix of valerie m's "tingles 2000" but that makes much more sense.

just going in on the continuous mix and feeling v vindicated. why the hell wasn't this the actual track listing?

i changed the actual tracklisting to reflect it. "hot like fire" as a penultimate track is weird but otherwise it works perfectly

whats the line ware sings starting with "i don't believe...", been trying to work it out

― r|t|c, Friday, December 7, 2012 7:57 PM (1 year ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

also this is v belated but i heard this last week and couldn't believe it ever stumped me. "i don't believe i can defend him", right?

ya i'd always assumed it was that but the line still sounds fudged somewhat

vox aside the lp version is reproduced a tad clearer i think

going to give this lp the grace of another chance sometime but i must admit the first blush leant towards insipid

yes! my initial thought when listening to it was of the artful dodger mix of valerie m's "tingles 2000" but that makes much more sense.

― prolego, Sunday, February 9, 2014 7:17 PM (3 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

<3 you for even thinking of this tune as a reference point for anything.

holy shit this is a grower

man, the continuous mix really is far superior. jeez.

the bridge of "all my lovin" seriously reminds me of that rihanna song that interpolates "pony"

So you guys reckon the "continuous mix" is worth the £2 for the upgrade?

Hmmm, going in now.

the continuous mix does make it more amazing, but re-ordering the individual tracks would probably work too. but the bonus tracks are definitely worth the extra £

Yeah, I've splashed out for it, downloading now. Await giddy glee in about 20 minutes...

My hard drive is now so full I have to operate on a one in/one out policy to add more albums on iTunes. Scrapped the turgid Atoms for Peace album for this, which feels kinda symbolic. :-/

Why are pop albums so L O O O O N N N N G G G G these days?

Getting to the point where 11, 12 songs in a row is the upper limit of my attention span.

I would eyeroll at this album if the whole thing weren't so sad.

Like, the continuous mix is okay but all it does is frontload all the insipid shit and really who wants that? The first half of this album is mostly good, the second half of the album proper is, by and large, flimsy and weak. And they certainly shouldn't have been roping in fucking hack Robbie Williams songwriting guns for hire (Crying For No Reason is still dreadful).

The bonus tracks are fantastic, yes, but (pardon my rockism here) they're bonus tracks, people will buy versions of this album without them. It's like whoever was responsible didn't feel they were good enough or something?

A Deluxe Edition where the bonus tracks are, by and large, the best bits, is a surefire sign of a project that's been unnecessarily pissed about with and triangulated to death. The fact that you're all working out alternative tracklistings shows that this album kinda already lost, like it should be a fucking TRIUMPH. It should be Katy and Geeneus doing victory laps around the pop landscape they helped usher in, and beating everyone else at their own gamne, not "hey you can make a decent album out of it if you shunt some tracks round and squint a bit".

This wouldn't matter so much if On A Mission hadn't been BOTH a peerless collection of bangers AND an album-qua-album that worked really well as a complete listen. I'm being harsh here, but really this album was only ever going to be a triumph or a failure for me, minimal middle-ground, raise your standards people.

Sorry you lost me calling CFNR dreadful.

I need to go back and look where the "official album" begins and ends to make up my mind on how I feel about it being too long/the bonus tracks being so much obviously better.

But I am now going to listen to the continuous mix.

On first listen, I think DC is a curmudgeon (as usual) because it's certainly not shit. I do completely hear the "badly sequenced" complaints, because yeah, it's not as "albumy" as the first one, but I am still bouncing up and down on the bed and annoying my neighbours with immediate excitement for some tracks but kinda "meh" on others.

It's not shit at all, it's pretty good, it's just not the album it should (and quite easily could) have been.

sort of feel like someone needed to go in on this album like mdc did b/c while its nowhere near that bad it's so weighed down by so many stupid decisions. though at the same time i reject the idea of holding albums to mythical standards, you sort of deal with them as they are, and i'd rather have an album i have to rearrange to make good than one that isn't salvageable. cf nicki minaj? ultimately roman reloaded was a fantastic album and it doesn't matter about the negatives.

I'm holding it to REAL standards - ie the first album.

The worst track here by miles is the one with Sampha (people in the music industry REALLY need to stop trying to make Sampha happen), but 'Still' reminds me a lot of 'Why Does My Heart Feel So Bad?' by Moby. Neither are a good look for Katy. 'Crying For A Reason' is great in theory but slushy in practice. 'All Loving' is a good Katy ballad though, although that's basically 'Go Away' pt 2.

Just one track with the unbridled joy of 'Got Paid' or the mischievous spark of 'Easy Please Me' would leaven this a lot.

It's a bit like she's a rapper and 'On A Mission' was the mixtape and this is the major label debut.

no i mean the "bonus tracks don't count" line. obviously it bespeaks the pissing around and triangulation you mentioned but they're still amazing songs! "super bass" was a bonus track, lest we forget. i guess the point i'm trying to make is that there are lots of amazing songs and their quality manages to override everyone's best efforts to make this an actual botch job

I like this album the closer it stays to the personality of Katy B that's been established, and less the further it moves from that to that of a Major Pop Star. I've never thought her strength was in powerful vocals but in the way her songwriting and nuance for performance really sold the songs and the idea of Katy B as a girl-next-door, fun but headstrong character - but there are parts of this album where it feels like it could be anyone rolling along Rudimental's factory line of guest vocalists. I'm not sure I believe that she can't be a massive star while keeping the essence of what makes her sparkle but this album isn't the way it could have been done.

and no, it's nowhere near as good as on a mission and even allowing for some of these songs to grow on me i doubt it'll by an EOY favourite but also it's february and there aren't really any better 2014 albums around yet (apart from toni braxton & babyface but that's hardly a big pop release or anything surprising)

You can buy copies of the album without Hot Like Fire etc = they don't really count. Obviously they will in the future when the Deluxe issue is the only one but for now it really does feel like they've been tacked on the end as an afterthought. Why is it not just a 15-track album? Really they should have been the first things on the tracklisting, not sitting on the subs bench.

I mean this is very much the way of post-death of the music industry pop music but Superbass was also very nearly a victim of a cloddish record company who didn't know what they had. Either that or they knew full well and just wanted to sell more copies at a later date.

boxedjoy and Matt DC otm about the weak songs and why they're weak.

The flaw with Deluxe editions, unlike B-sides which came out one by one, is that they can't help making you want to rearrange the tracklisting and judge the existing album more harshly. Like Christina Aguilera's Bionic actually seemed even more misguided when you realised that most of the bonus tracks were better. It's like the artist and label are inviting the listener to pick apart their decision-making.

Just one track with the unbridled joy of 'Got Paid'

"everything"

fyi the infinity ink remix of "crying for no reason" is quite something

https://soundcloud.com/katyb/crying-for-no-reason-infinity-ink-remix

very sympathetic to matt's idea that you shouldn't have to redraw the whole sequence of an album with bonus tracks added to remotely like it, that's a point against it, but there is also a literally available for purchase version of this record with a functional tracklisting

*deep breath* i think i like this record more than on a mission at this point. matt makes the point that this record should have been katy and geeneus running circles around pop but i like it for what it is: a very interior paranoid/euphoric club record. on a mission does a lot of different things and does them all well, but i like the focus of little red (sonically, 17 tracks can't really be called "focused"), and through that focus it becomes a record about its individual, subtle details, which sort of gently circulate into view (the bridge of "sapphire blue," the droning synth in "i like you")

it's frustrating because my first listen to this was so middling! i wasn't expecting to go to bat for this record at all, yet i haven't really wanted to listen to another record for the last week

That Infinity Ink remix is the real deal.

it's frustrating because my first listen to this was so middling! i wasn't expecting to go to bat for this record at all, yet i haven't really wanted to listen to another record for the last week

― emo canon in twee major (BradNelson), Wednesday, February 12, 2014 10:24 AM (6 hours ago) Bookmark

yeah i'm with you on this and i think i might like this more than 'on a mission' at this point too

A couple of rockcrit friends who are meh on female dance pop instantly liked this album. Suspicious, I've listened to the album repeatedly and the only one which now stuns me after shrugging it off was "Crying For No Reason." I don't think I'll wake up humming "Still" or "Play." I mean, it's still a good album but in the A-/B+ range.

"better than you initially think" is one thing but "better than on a mission" is clinically insane

and it's not such a departure that you can go "oh well they're so different that you can't really compare"

yeah sarge I blinked several times after reading your post

My head is still so full of Interpol that after 4 listens I still don't have any of these songs stuck in my head. But I think that's due to the intensity of that listening experience, rather than failure to be catchy. 17 songs is a lot to process in one go. Especially when all of them seem to be about "blue".

My head is still so full of Interpol

you may need a penicillin shot

I think I need the full retroviral. :-/

Still' reminds me a lot of 'Why Does My Heart Feel So Bad?' by Moby

yeah I was wondering if someone had brought this up yet

fully aware that i'm insane

and it's not such a departure that you can go "oh well they're so different that you can't really compare"

― lex pretend, Wednesday, February 12, 2014 5:30 PM (2 hours ago) Bookmark

i think it's more different than you guys are giving it credit for

vocally, for one, i think she is doing things on this record that she didn't do on 'on a mission'

also the point of view is a bit... refined i think. there was still some, like, schoolgirl innocence to 'on a mission' that has been shed here.

there's definitely an energy (in several ways) to 'on a mission' that isn't on this album but i kinda feel it a bit deeper

Would you describe it as "a little deeper".

it certainly doesn't easy please me

STIIIIIIIIIIIIIILLLLLLLLLLLLLLL... man, this is such an amazing closer on the mix, putting it on before the bonus tracks so that Blue Eyes comes after it is just *insane* sequencing logic. But I think that's the fault of "bonus tracks" rather than sequencing. Why can't bonus tracks be sequenced better?

why isn't the sun hot?

Andy Gill's review is a classic of pretending you know what you're talking about when you plainly don't have a clue.

http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/music/reviews/album-reviews-sun-kil-moon-tinariwen-temples-sunn-o-katy-b-serge-gainsbourg-9112193.html