This album edges dangerously close to the dreaded
adult contemporary--the kind of music you listen to while drinking wine and considering art with your yuppie friends in a Whit Stillman-esque panorama of decadent wealth. The album cover doesn't do much to alter this conception. Feist's vocals throughout are kind of emotionless and pretty and the arrangements are simple, unobtrusive and--sigh--
tasteful. I find this kind of record as pointless to hate as it it to love--only by using the most tortured Marxist criteria could you call the thing "bad", but it's not going to change anybody's life, either. The whole thing is just too cold and distant to be a classic--compare this record with Cat Power's far more spotty but much more emotionally tortured
You Are Free. Several of these songs are so "atmospheric" and without melody that they pass by without any memory of even having existed at all ("The Park", "The Water") and "Sealion" is an annoying kids' track that should have been cut. But even I have to admit that the melody to the infamous "1234" is something special and "Honey Honey" is effectively austere and chilling. The result is a record that seeks to be professional above all things--how far you're able to stand that kind of thing is exactly how much you're going to like it.
MY RATING:
6.5
Feist - "My Moon My Man"
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