Keeping it less complicated
IT’S great news that Avril Lavigne has recovered enough from her battle with Lyme disease to record music again. And the title track of
Head Above Water tells the story of that struggle well, using a dramatic ballad and more forceful use of her powerful voice to great effect.
These new songs, her first since 2013’s Avril Lavigne album, are clearly personal, dealing with relationship woes as well as her health issues. And nearly all lean more towards the pop world than the pop-rock she used to straddle with hits like Complicated or Sk8er Boi.
The problem is she doesn’t always navigate that world very well. Sometimes, it’s a lyrical problem — like in Goddess where she mispronounces “bananas” so it rhymes with “pajamas.” Sometimes, it’s a phrasing problem — like the way she slips into vocal fry in the serious I Fell In Love
With The Devil as she talks about “teddy bears and ‘I’m sorry’ letters.” BECK, Patti Smith, Unkle, DJ Shadow and Billie Eilish are part of a large and diverse group performing songs inspired by Alfonso Cuaron’s
Roma, resulting in an album that has plenty of good music but with few direct links to the film.
The film’s soundtrack was based on songs played by Mexican radio stations in the 1970s, most by Mexican artistes like Jose Jose and Javier Solis.
Most of the 15 tracks on this album are originals written by some of Cuaron’s favourite musicians, including Cafe Tacuba’s Quique Rangel and Asaf Avidan, and today you’d search far and wide – and probably without success – for a commercial broadcaster with a playlist this varied. French sister duo Ibeyi’s Cleo
Who Takes Care Of You references the movie – Cleo is the live-in maid at the core of Roma, a Mexico City neighborhood – as does Sonido Gallo Negro’s Cumbia Del Borras, which includes plenty of barking by the dog it pays homage to, and in a more elliptical way, so do EL-P & Wilder Zoby with their space-age instrumental Marooned.
Other top songs include Con El
Viento by a fragile-sounding but determined Jessie Reyez, Michael Kiwanuka singing on Unkle’s On My
Knees, and Beck’s fascinating, orchestrated Tarantula – an early 1980s UK pearl by Colourbox – where he sounds like Robert Plant doing a Bryan Ferry impression.
After Laura Marling’s stately take on Those Were The Days, which can be heard by Ray Conniff in the film, T Bone Burnett’s Roma feels like someone ripping off your earphones while you were daydreaming.
It ends the album with four minutes of hammering percussion and sounds of the city, including salesmen hawking honey and roasted pumpkin seeds. The dream is over but life has to go on. –
The issues on Head Above Water are numerous, but generally minor. The fact that easily addressed things were left in means Lavigne likely wanted them that way, leaving her comeback slightly short of where it could have gone. – Glenn Gamboa/ Newsday/Tribune News Service