MIA

At the risk of sounding like another kind of dick, that's pretty much exactly the gist of my Q review (not online so nobody's read it): "Obsessed with enemies, real and imagined, M.I.A. has begun to encase herself in armour which threatens to squeeze out her previous capacity for warmth and celebration." It's a point that can be made without sounding like a psychopath.

I see that angry cokemachineglow guy's review of !!! includes imagined dialogue, which is one dreadful reviewing gimmick I'm glad Pitchfork grew out of.

rich four four's is amazing. That's the ultimate consensus review.

holy shit that four four thing!

"I feel as if I’m breaking up with my girlfriend of three years."

man, I would be so much more into that FourFour piece if it wasn't hyperlinked (although I know it needs to be); reading all of that formatted that way gives me a headache

(also lol, sorry Jess)

http://i223.photobucket.com/albums/dd120/hipsterrunoff/photographs/hro/644005c6.jpg

i do not enjoy reading hipster runoff. it is like kim jong il.

lol

Right now my main complaint about this album is that it chickens out halfway through and gets really slushy and nonabrasive without having anything really interesting or compelling to back up easing off the intensity of the music. Maybe no one else wants an entire album of "Teqkilla" but I really, really do.

kim jong il is the greatest writer in the world

man, I would be so much more into that FourFour piece if it wasn't hyperlinked (although I know it needs to be); reading all of that formatted that way gives me a headache

― HI DERE, Thursday, 15 July 2010 13:43 (8 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

haha running my cursor over it randomly was my favourite thing about it!

Ha! I'm the exact opposite. Can't stand Teqkilla and only grow to love the album from Story to Be Told onwards. I like the vulnerability. Obviously I was never a big enough Skinny Puppy fan.

I'm actually trying to think of a better analogue than Skinny Puppy because the music on this is a good bit brighter than the sound palette they worked with; there's definite harshness going on but none of the menace.

lol I am making it sound like Nitzer Ebb, aren't I?

"Truffle I'm Here"

FORCE IS MACHINE
I LOVALOT
ALLAH

"teqkilla" was the only track i felt like i might want to play again (and that only after listening to the nicki minaj remix)

"lovalot" was definitely the nadir

Okay, you disliked "Lovalot" more than "It Iz What It Iz"????????????????

like, how is that even possible

Actually "Violent Playground" kinda IS the MIA aesthetic summed up in two words there, Dan.

ha yeah I was thinking that

maybe by "it iz what it iz" i was just drifting elsewhere, i don't remember it whereas i distinctly recall cringing at how bored she sounded on "lovalot"

it's seriously terrible, rivalling "It Takes A Muscle" for worst song on the album

kind of lolling at Diplo being all "I'm the only one doing any quality control on her" when his two tracks are easily among the worst on the album

i dont think shes bored. more just tired. or weary. or unhappy. all qualities which dont necessarily = bad music.

ha I was going to roll my eyes hardcore at Nicki Minaj being the gateway into "Teqkilla" and then I heard the verse excerpted on a Youtube video and srsly this is the first thing I've heard of hers that's been unambiguously great

Tell me why some people hate Tell Me Why.

some people just like to moan about stuff cos its fun.

Musically, it's a lot thinner than most of the songs on the album. It's also just not very interesting; it's midtempo meandering doesn't really go anywhere and the thin arrangement makes autotuned vocals stick out as a very unflattering treatment of her voice; generally speaking, M.I.A. sounds better when she doesn't sounds like Ke$ha.

In fairness, I would probably like it more were it not on this album, where all of the clatter and messiness is really grabbing my attention and the calm tracks are not.

Maybe no one else wants an entire album of "Teqkilla" but I really, really do.

^^^. The first side of the album is fantastic.

also "Lovalot" is the tense, paranoid piece of music with a great use of tempo and her flat-affect delivery (kind of like on "XR2") makes the song for me, particularly on the Chinese interjections when she briefly bursts out of it and then slides back in

This may seem a bit blasphemous, but is MAYA MIA's On The Corner?

And also, is it just me or is Diplo's idea of "quality control" to only include songs that are either produced by Diplo (or maybe Switch) or that sound like them?

you might be onto something there!

I know that some folks have argued against looking at this album from the perspective of which producers worked on it because it was all "M.I.A.s sound", but I'm not sure that I'm really convinced. I think the move from Diplo/Switch to Rusko shows to a certain extent how much what we consider the "M.I.A. sound" was perhaps really the Diplo/Switch sound. Rusko comes from a completely different world of club-friendly, bangin' dubstep and I think the harshness of his tracks comes across on MAYA as well.

this is a pretty good record. i don't really get a lot of the reviews i've read. some of them sound to me like they'd never actually listened to her before. it's hard for me to find anything on here, musically or lyrically, that doesn't follow directly in one way or another from things she's done before. i can understand hating it if you hate m.i.a. i can't at all understand hating it if you like or have ever liked m.i.a.

xpost: sort of, but there's always been a pretty brazen harshness to her sound. arular is full of clanks and bangs. the distorto-scuzz is i guess sort of new, but not a surprising one.

not a surprising move, i mean.

(i do think it's her weakest album, on initial listen, but a.) i might change my mind, and b.) considering how much i love the other ones, that's not really a put-down.)

the growing trend here is a march away from minimalist arrangements towards maximalism; her original songs were one or two synth lines/samples built around relatively simple beats and, with each successive album, she does stuff with more layers/pieces to it (which btw is why I call out the songs on this that I have; they're the ones that slip back into the older ways of doing MIA songs and are as a result a lot less interesting; the only one in this mold that works for me is "Lovalot")

This is the first album in months I've actually bought as opposed to downloading first and living with it for a few weeks, and -- wow, I'm with tipsy. Beside the producer switches, I don't hear anything on this album that would alienate a fan.

with each successive album, she does stuff with more layers/pieces to it

yeah, i think that's true. and it's why i love the sound of kala more than arular, it has these deep weird sound fields. this one is even busier, obviously. and buzzier, not lush like a lot of kala is. but it makes sense to me, none of the directions on the new one seem unprecedented given her earlier stuff. i mean, i guess if people just don't think the songs are very good, that's one thing. but enough of them already click with me that i don't share that opinion -- and i think more of them will click with me on more listens.

The sounds are harsh, steel-thin, and pop like firecrackers in unexpected places. The sequence from "XXXO to "Story To Be Told" is terrific noise-pop.

For me (given the caveat I noted yesterday) the primary attraction has always been her sound -- said sound may be mostly the work of others and what they bring to it but hey, it's her name on it and she has put the stamp on it, so it's hers as I hear it. As such it's an often very rich world where comprehension (lyrical or otherwise) almost reduces the impact, speaking strictly for myself.

the neverending, incomprehensible “Teqkilla,” a torture chamber of painful blips and industrial ambiance

Why does this sound appealing to me? I think this could be the description for some of my favorite music.

have you heard the album yet, Ned?

Not yet, my slight contrarian side is kicking in with this and so many other releases right around now (Big Boi being another example) that are being so "OMG HEAR RIGHT NOW OR DIE" talked about that I'm all, "Um, I'll get to this in a little bit here, thanks." They aren't going to go anywhere in a month or two and I'd like to think I'm not beholden to the must-react-now culture. (I'd *like* to think that, I'm probably wrong.)

Should say I've heard the singles of course, just not the full album.

I don't hear anything on this album that would alienate a fan.

Agreed - it sounds like an M.I.A. record to these (cloth?) ears. It's a bit patchy and a few songs have yet to grip me but that's probably what I first thought about Kala. Much preferring the noisier first half so far.

i think it's a sign of how much i just basically dig her thing that you could make a track like "believer" about three times as long and i'd be perfectly happy with it.

(the "bonus" tracks are worth tracking down imo, even tho "caps lock" is pretty drab.)

Im waiting for the right mood to listen to this album as a whole with full attention. Something tells me I'll really love it. I love noisey stuff.

um has this been posted?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MROxPK18v5I

yup