MIA

UH OH

http://threeroomspress.blogspot.com/2010/07/review-mia-fizzles-out-in-2010-stage.html

Her mic was still out for song two: "Bucky Done Gun" from the 2005 release "Arular." And by then the ninjas and others had left the stage, so it was just two women bouncing around in front of lights and projections, and only one of them could be heard, atop a muddy sound mix.
By song three, they were turning laser lights on the audience, and MIAs mic started making some noise. "Lovalot" came next, and little had improved. MIA kept going into the night. And the crowd started heading en masse for the boat home: exhausted and sorely disappointed.

acc to tweets the show got cut off for rain not long after

upstaged by die antwoord. the ironing.

the dancehall sample in "lovalot" is so fucking sick

after playing it 3 times I fucking love it except for maybe "tell me why". bonus tracks fall kinda flat tho

One of the albums of the year.

it is an album and it came out this year but that's where our opinions diverge

I'm listening to this right now and I'm not really hearing any bad tracks...it's a bit of a curveball after Kala, not quite on that level, but it's hella solid, which is not the impression you would get from surfing the Net for a couple of hours...

...or from reading this thread.

I'm digging "Tell Me Why" more although I still hate the chorus. Still not really warming to "It Takes a Muscle" or "It Is What It Is".

weed helps.

i love both those songs and do not weed

I'm not having any truck with the "OMG I listened to it on a proper sound system and bass is HUGE!" crew here because massive wobbly bass is kinda the bare minimum you expect when you get Rusko in on a track. It's not making me feel any more affection towards the songs.

xpost

yeah, was kidding there. I don't really see how you couldn't enjoy "It Takes A Muscle", which is the closest thing to a chart "hit" on the album.

it keeps getting better with every play for me; bass to the treble, treble to the bass. heck, there's so much sonic detail to get lost in here, that i'm almost inclined to call it her Sgt. Pepper in that respect. or maybe it's only her DSOTM? ^_^

dude

there are so many mustaches in the photos for the Killers' Sam's Town that I like to call it their Sgt Pepper in that respect.

yeah, but where does the The Black Parade fit in?

my 5-yr-old, who was a big fan of kala, has started to warm to maya after some evident early uncertainty. the third time he heard "teqkilla" in the car, he started banging in time on whatever was in reach from his car seat. he likes "lovalot" too.

(i'm just hoping the vocals are obscured enough that he's not going to show up in kindergarten saying "i run this fucking club")

club-a-club-a-club-club club-a-club-a-club-club

Street Sweeper Social Club covering "Paper Planes"!

http://www1.rollingstone.com/hearitnow/player.php?xmlData=streetsweeper/streetsweeper.xml

thx a lot guyz im tryin 2 watch me spendin' and all yer talk about M.I.A. got me curious and I bought Kala and really liked it hope you're happy now i'm filing for bankruptcy

All I wanna do is [bang bang bang bang]
And a [ka-ching]
And take all your money

otm

i walked past m.i.a in dalston last night!

felt 'relevant' etc

late pass non-groundbreaking album discussion

i actually like most of the music on this but the lyrics are among the worst i've ever heard

Really? Which in particular? I've heard a lot of lyrics worse than this.

We gotta love one another
That's what the good man says
But i got too much trouble
Going on in my head

from it takes a muscle... everything just seems so trite, i mean i guess the problem is that there's very little originality in there?

tweeting me like tweetie bird on your iphone... really? what makes it worse is that xxxo is probably my favourite song on the album.

It Takes a Muscle is a cover version of a song by a Dutch band singing in a second language so that's not the best example to pick.

i like some of her lines, but in general m.i.a.'s lyrics have never functioned very well outside the music. which is ok by me, that's true of lots of people.

She always reminded me of Missy Elliott in that respect (lots of rappers, obviously, but her especially). I love Missy's music but I'm not in the market for a slim hardback volume of her lyrics.

Though I think Kala is often brilliant lyrically.

so i'm just stupid then, ha

My least favorite moment on this album: when she says "Hu Jintao" in a cringeworthy "Chinese" accent. Makes my skin crawl.

The lyrics on Lovealot in general seem to be aiming at the pseudo-political by throwing out names of famous figures and referencing the Taliban. I'm not a big fan of this strategy.

well, the song is allegedly about Dzhennet Abdurakhmanova so I'm not sure if "psuedo-political" is the right way to describe the song

btw googling her brings up lovely pictures of her burnt severed head, so be careful

Is it making an actual political point or merely signifying hardness by drawing parallels between female bombers and M.I.A.? To me, it's probably the latter, but I will admit a certain level of ignorance about the meaning behind most of her tracks.

The song isn't about her at all; she's portraying a character in it loosely based off of Abdurakhmanova

Sadly, Lovalot is one of those songs which works fine if you know what it's about but seems shockingly inept if you don't. I'm not saying it needed to be called The Ballad of Dzhennet Abdurakhmanova but that belated knowledge totally transformed the track for me.

not gonna dispute that, especially since "Sunshowers" works almost exactly the same way

It's funny to imagine that she would write a track that is somehow not about her. I mean, sure you could look at it as a character study, but it is M.I.A.'s personality that comes through the strongest. To me, she isn't trying to educate us about an interesting person, but rather using that person's story to bolster the image of M.I.A. as lyrical terrorist or whatever.

That ties into something I saw a lot in Maya reviews - the tendency to make assumptions based on an incredibly low opinion of MIA's intellect and motives and to present them as fact rather than float them as theories. Like "It's hard to believe this idiotic egotist could write a song that wasn't about being an idiotic egotist."

I had no idea the track wasn't about her and unless I'm missing something the track itself offers no clues.

Did you ever read the lyrics to "$20", Moodles, specifically the first verse?

That's the problem with it. I think if she'd thrown in one specific name, of a person or a place, to distance herself from the narrator it could be read as she (presumably) intended, as opposed to scattershot sloganeering.

I just think it is a safe assumption to think that when someone writes a song, no matter what the subject is, it is as much a reflection of themselves as it is of a larger subject matter. I don't see any reason to think this wouldn't be the case on this particular track.

In terms of MIA's self-awareness, it's worth nothing Hussel, where she allows Afrikan Boy to trump her own claims: "You think it's tough now? Come to Africa." I think she's well aware of the distance between her and genuine developing world hustlers, terrorists, etc.

Moodles, that assumption is bizarre - have you not heard of first-person character songs?

Of course I have, but why would you assume that those songs are completely divorced from the person who wrote them?

I think the lyrics on Kala are generally stronger than on Maya, but that's only a matter of degree. I don't really think any of her tracks have truly great lyrics. The tracks on Kala are more clearly situated outside of her own internal world, but even in those cases it would be odd to me to think they aren't an expression of her personality on some level.