Rock & Roll Report Card

  • Arts
Out of Control
Out of Control

A
Out of Control
Girls Aloud

Fascination

Spawned in the early years of the millennium from a dreadful reality show, Girls Aloud have surpassed their (considerable) early promise to become one of Britain’s most successful and critically acclaimed bands.

Production team Xenomania provides the songs, and the girls, the voices and image. Together, they’re renowned for inventive, exhilarating pop singles. If anything, the bar for this, Girls Aloud’s fifth studio album, was set almost impossibly high.

Quite a few tracks resemble what I can only describe as 1990s European electronica. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but combined with the conspicuous scarcity of Nadine Coyle’s impassioned solos, it gives the album a cold, and at times, almost robotic patina.

Out of Control has moved away from the swagger and breakneck pace of its masterful predecessor, 2007’s Tangled Up. Instead, we hear a different Girls Aloud—sometimes optimistic and sweetly vulnerable, sometimes jaded and cynical. Lead single “The Promise” features an irresistibly catchy chorus and distinctly 60s harmonies. “Rolling Back the Rivers in Time” is a slower track that shows the band at their most cheesy and irresistibly disarming.

Girls Aloud haven’t abandoned their signature dance floor anthems, though—“Turn to Stone” wouldn’t sound out of place on a recent Britney record. But here, the girls come across as older, wiser and somehow damaged.

Those looking for a quirky, infectious romp more along the lines of previous hits “Sexy! No No No…” or “Biology” won’t come away disappointed. “Miss You Bow Wow” has all the fuzzed-up guitar and gleefully filthy lyrics you’ll ever need: “I remember living the dream/20 minutes in the hotel bar/Then I slip into your girlfriend’s jeans.” Needless to say, this is one of my personal favourites.

“Love is Pain,” another highlight, pairs 80s disco synths with icy, elegant vocals.

If you’re familiar with British music, you’ll know Girls Aloud, though beloved, aren’t exactly the epitome of hip. But try as you might, you won’t hate this record—trust me.

—Lauren Miles

B+
Davy
Coconut Records

Young Baby Records

Jason Schwartzman—the man behind the solo act Coconut Records—is a little boy with big problems.

In his follow-up to 2007’s indie pop hit Nighttiming, this one-man army of instruments keeps it short, sweet and anything but simple.

Schwartzman’s sophomore effort pairs the sounds of a lazy California adolescence à la Beach Boys with heavier, autobiographical fare in a sunny, quirky ode to George Harrison. It sounds like a drive down Abbey Road with frequent exits along the Los Angeles interstate.

Trumpets, chimes, organs and more wurlitzers than Oktoberfest are layered over juvenile lyrical expressions of life`s greatest moments. On “I Am Young,” Schwartzman is a caricature of a young boy leaving home in a wagon, waiting for his mother to convince him to stay. On “Drummer,” he gives a year-by-year playback of his father’s death when Schwartzman was 14 and his struggle to sort himself out over a Sgt. Pepper throwback march and thundering piano. On “The Summer” he indulges the pleas of bored, dejected teenage boys everywhere, separated from their lovers by state lines in the summertime.

Through vignette after vignette of a life in music, it’s clear that Schwartzman’s up-tempo bike ride is not underwhelming, but more powerful for its frankness.

On the major-minor fluctuating heartbreaker “Courtyard”—Schwartzman’s very own “I Saw Her Standing There”—a shy chorus sings “I love you, but I’d never tell you that.” Although very much a juvenile sentiment, the line is very telling of Schwartzman’s treading on deeper emotional playgrounds.

Even the mastermind of Coconut Records cannot seem to escape sadness on the sunniest of days.

—Kate Underwood

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