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Rainbow Kesha Sony
IS Kesha venturing into country music now? Her third studio album, Rainbow, features a number of tracks which sound unmistakably country, a rather unorthodox move for the 30-year-old singer.
Kesha first burst into the music scene with her unique talk-singing style on smash hits Tik Tok and Timber. There’s still plenty of that here in the spirited girl power anthem Woman, the playful, dance-ready Boogie Feet and the self-affirming Let ‘Em Talk.
Still, more than anything, Rainbow is about showing that there’s another side to the singer.
Kesha’s mum Pebe Sebert is a songwriter and co-wrote Old Flames (Can’t Hold A Candle To You) in the 1970s. The track was later covered by Dolly Parton, which topped the country charts.
She performs her rendition of the song with Parton in the album and it’s absolutely breathtaking. It’s hard to imagine Kesha’s edgy vocals on the classic country ballad but somehow it works.
Her earlier works like Tik Tok did little to demonstrate her singing prowess, and it seems like she’s making up for lost time, unleashing her vocal chops with one ballad after another.
There is a sweetness to Kesha’s voice we’ve never heard before in these slow-tempo tunes especially on the title track, the country-tinged Spaceship and Finding You. The latter is a sentimental ballad, pledging her unchanging love to her lover.
But the album’s big moment has to be her awe-inspiring performance on Praying. The strength of her voice combined with the torrent of emotions unleashed makes the track a spine-chilling listening experience. (Many suggest that the song has to do with her ongoing legal battle with former producer Dr Luke, whom Kesha accused of sexually assaulting her.) True to the album’s title, Rainbow is all about embracing the different hues and colours of her musical identity. – Kenneth Chaw
Battle Bloom Maps And Diagrams Independent
LIFE is a gamble, and everything in it, likewise. So, when a band attempts to proliferate in a genre that’s well-worn, there are only two truly distinct outcomes – sticking out like a sore thumb for a sense of individuality within the sphere, or becoming another face in the crowd.
Battle Bloom’s debut, Maps And Diagrams, walks the tightrope dividing the two, and while there are nervy moments at those lofty heights, songcraft invariably prevails. The nucleus of the band, Fariz Salleh and Melissa Toh, having been around for at least a decade, shows in the way the guitar delicately cradles the voice throughout this six-song offering and how lucidly the words paint pictures.
Waiting sets the tone of an album that delves into the human condition of living, loving, hurting and moving on. Toh professes to move on with her life through her wispy vocals and Fariz’s jaunty acoustic guitar rhythm.
Slick R&B grooves straight out of the 1980s permeate The Fight, though the dreamy passages eject it straight into the world of contemporary music. Ghost follows a similar trajectory, and likewise, is a wistful and moody piece.
Colours, the longest track on the album, clocking at 6:08 minutes, is one of the few songs which takes this debut to varying sonic pastures, its sinewy melodies, courtesy of keyboardist Dianne Lim, cascading over drummer Ryan Lee Bhaskaran’s understated groove. The Magic Stone offers the greatest shift in tempo and breaks away from the flavour of the rest of the album, which has the propensity to sound staid at times.
This is all undoubtedly in the folk pop domain, with off-kilter arrangements peppered throughout, which is really what makes Maps And Diagrams outline itself as an interesting piece of work in the atlas of the genre. – N. Rama Lohan
Passion Pit Tremendous Sea Of Love Wishart Group
PASSION Pit’s Michael Angelakos says that he has stepped away from being a commercialised artist and his new album, Tremendous Sea Of Love, is part of that move.
Angelakos initially made the album available for free to fans who tweeted support of his #weneedscience campaign in March. Now he is making it an official release, with all proceeds going to psychiatric scientific research at the Broad Institute’s Stanley Centre in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Tremendous Sea Of Love often finds Angelakos at his most immediate, unguarded pop melodies like Hey K, where he declares, “Love is the answer” over a soaring bed of synthesizers, and the upbeat thrill ride I’m Perfect.
The sweet ballad To The Otherside and the singer-songwriter throwback soul of You Have The Right could easily find a home on pop radio, the way Take A Walk or The Reeling did, if that was what Angelakos wanted at this point. However, instead of advancing his own interests, Angelakos is focusing on furthering the interests of all artists, which he hopes will help create the Tremendous Sea of Love that he seeks.