James Arden checks out the garage rockers latest album.
The Christian rock band from Brighton bring religion to the masses.
Recipe for modern R'n'B album: liberal helpings of guest rappers and an overdose of sexual euphemisms.
The starting song, ‘Everyone’s At It,’ is all about drugs. From children in the playground to party politicians we are all, apparently, glued to those powdery white lines. Sirens whirl in the background, and policemen pop up in verse. The melody marches onwards until, breaking into a Coldplay crescendo it disappears in a frenzied mashed up blur of loud sound. Perhaps Lily is trying to emulate the hazed, drug-crazed state of the population. Who knows?
‘The Fear’ sees Lily change her tune. Singing in the voice of a star-hungry starlet, she desperately tries to dance in the limelight. But it’s not all diamantes and diamonds; puzzled by stardom the vacuous starlet ponders life’s meaning: “I don't know what's right and what's real anymore/ I don't know how I'm meant to feel anymore”. Touching on the matter of tabloid tatter Lily recalls how she looks in ‘The Sun’ and 'The Mirror’, yet even that doesn’t make anything clearer. Masterfully the melody becomes composed confusion. Spiralling out in eddies the sounds of the song create an inescapable dizziness; for a moment we are caught up in the flurrying heights of celebrity hype.
The best tracks offer a peep into Lily’s love life. As though whispering a secret Lily takes us through the first tentative steps of a relationship. The ‘five o’clock in the morning, conversation got boring’ scenario leads to an arm round the shoulder, and, with true Lily-esque observation she trills how ‘even though it’s moving forward, there’s just the right amount of awkward’.
Though the album keeps her classic 'da da daaas' and 'tra la la laaas' it does break out into some new beats. ‘22’ introduces a finger-clicking groove and a wistful ragtime clarinet while ‘Back to the Start’ looses her ditty-ish style in favour of a crashing, Ibiza bashing opening.
Lily navigates musical genres with perfect precision. Cutting out the things she likes she places a tinkling jazz piano with a wistful folksy accordion. The effect mirrors her lyrics. Chattering about people, places and snippets of conversation, the music, just like the subject matter, seems to be a sewing together of random rags. The end result is fruitful. She might get a bit carried away with drugs and Bush but the bitter-sweet nonchalant love-rhymes set Lily Allen back on her pink pedestal, away from tabloid headlines.
It's Not Me, It's You is out now.
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