AR: Kala

M.I.A. - Kala (2007)

* - Going to try to get a little more succinct with these bad boys, as the drive to give comprehensive accounts is seeming to lead to a lot of unwritten album reviews. I will, I'm sure, fail in this attempt, both on the being-succinct and getting-them-written levels.

Forgive me for trying to rein a vague and inherently wide-ranging term into a couple of neat categories, but there seem to be two brands of postmodernism - the first revolving around the more philosophical realization that all observation comes from a subject and that the biases inherent in any vantage create problems for declarations of absolute standards for taste, truth, etc. Loosely speaking, it's the relativism problem, the notion that the awareness of a lack of a true center alters the way we evaluate (especially novel or "foreign") experience. The second brand is less concerned with the problems of evaluation and more with the aesthetic fireworks that emerge when cultures collide - with no authoritative reference point, the world becomes a playground of infinitely varied source material. This has, natch, been going on since man has been curing dinosaur cancer, but the pace of cross-breeding afforded by tehcno-globalization has, to say the least, cranked things up a bit of late. The collisions are often laced with overtones of post-colonialization, hegemony (think American pop stars co-opting vaguely "African" music - Mr. Simon, I'm looking your direction), and weird, possibly guilt-associated trappings of enjoying music more the more forlorn and war-torn its land of origin is. Point being, as much as a kitchen sink, melting pot approach gets adopted, the directionality of the assimilation is usually readily apparent; you're either hearing Western pop incorporating elements of "world" - gotta love that - music, or world music that is trying to render itself palatable by, I don't know, using AutoTune. Or guitars or something. Someone's usually thieving from someone as much as paying homage to them, and usually it's a sort of dichotomous relationship of taker-takee.

M.I.A. runs with this second brand almost exclusively and takes it to pop-experimental extremes. But she also manages to obliterate centrality and level fields in a manner that makes it pretty difficult to tell which way the co-opting is running - there are so many elements, such a pastiche chef-act going on, that one quickly loses bearing. And just to put the thesis upfront, that is both the brilliance and chaos of this album. She's an electronic hip-hop artist with a hyperactive sound and a well-covered super-cosmopolitan background; India, Sri Lanka, England, Lebanon, etc., are among the places that have explicitly influenced her music in the wikipedian sense. She also laces this album with classic rock, '80s club, and '90s alterna hits, not just as samples, but as the driving riffs of songs. SO for every digeroo or indigenous Sri Lankan drum track, there's a nod to the childhood music of the very critics that have made her a "'s darling." It's very exciting, boldly makes little attempt to pander to mainstream catchiness - certain buzzing electronic sounds downright clash against native drums in chaotic-if-not-cacophonic rhythms - and generally overwhelms with multi-varied sonic assault.

Throw on top of this that M.I.A., the one consistent feature of these tracks featuring different styles, instrumentation and producers, refuses to maintain a stable vocal delivery, and you've essentially got a centerless album. Things fall apart, indeed. The end result is thrilling music from everywhere and nowhere - true enough that it doesn't sound much like anything else going (other than the fact that it's constantly flashing its influences here and there), but true enough also that its slippery "who is this again?" nature makes it hard to sink teeth. This is not to say that there isn't a sort of broadly unified sound to the album - somehow there is - just that the gestalt experience is a swimming head.

So the power in this album is its high energy and never-dull sound palette. Much gets ballied about regarding M.I.A.'s politics and how they manifest in her lyrics, but other than the overt (the gunshots and cash-register chings from "Paper Planes," for example), they seem to take a backseat to the drum-wizardry and M.I.A.'s brash delivery. This album succeeds largely because it is so damn interesting, in the more straight to the word sense of actually grabbing your focus (it's terrible background music).

This energy has drawbacks, too - the chaos is a bit much to take in certain moods, and moments frankly grate. It's cool as an artistic statement, but the dynamic of pops and schizophrenic surround sound falls out of balance toward, weirdly, an overly spastic drone in moments. This is upfront (good) but slightly obnoxious (bad!) music, and depending how supportive you are in the moment of genre-hurricane music, you'll either be decidedly up for it or decidedly not (I had it on repeat yesterday and found myself oscillating from hate to love with regularity). For a last complaint, some of the tracks that rely heavily on samples - "Paper Planes" with its Clash riff, "$20" with its bizarrely chanted Pixies lyrics, Jimmy with its Abba-meets-Bollywood disco melody - are interesting, sure, but on fourth and fifth listen, reveal a bit too much their reliance on the power of the original.

All of that said, plenty of highlights here - "Paper Planes" is pretty damn irresistible, the cheer squad "Boyz" is invigorating, the trunk rattler "XR2" will, er, rattle your trunk effectively enough, and even the nasally, whiny chant-along "World Town" - with even more gun-cocking sound effects - gets hips shaking. There's plenty more; like I've indicated, there's nary a *dull* moment on this album, it's just that it gets a little too undull at times.

Definitely recommended as a 21st century, grab from every pile, pomo electronic third world punk experience, but it's so mood-dependent and potentially annoying that I can't give it an unqualified yes. Do check it, of course.

Status: Recommended (solid)

Nyet's Fave: "Paper Planes"