Introduction

OUR LOVE (2014)
1) Can't Do Without You; 2) Silver; 3) All I Ever Need; 4) Our Love; 5) Dive; 6) Second Chance; 7) Julia Brightly; 8) Mars; 9) Back Home; 10) Your Love Will Set You Free.
Please to witness yet another strong proof of how much the reviewer is falling out with the times (again!) — apparently, Our Love got the strongest, most raving reviews of Snaith's entire career, and even made it all the way to No. 46 on the Billboard charts, yet I can barely bring myself to sit through half of it (and several relistens have only made the torture worse), so here's a very brief verdict and hopefully I'll never have to do this again.
In a nutshell: where Swim could at least still be called a psychedelic dance album, Our Love is just a dance album, period. It's probably far from the worst IDM album ever released, but it is precisely that — an IDM album. And I am no enemy of IDM when we're talking classic Aphex Twin or other people who have the proper guts to export our conscience into outer space or to orchestrate a robotic apocalypse, but Snaith, with his «sunshine attitude» that was so à propos when dabbling in abstract electronic jazz on his first records, or when going retro-Sixties on Andorra, is just boring as hell when he goes for straight house music.
Of course, he still mixes it up, and there is, for instance, a strong streak of R&B running through the album. ʽCan't Do Without Youʼ, opening the album, samples a bit of Marvin Gaye, com­bining the sample with Dan's own falsetto, but I've always thought that the primary power of R&B is always locked in live grooves and spontaneously generated power, whereas here we are locked within a robotic, sterile arrangement, and the complex overdubs of several waves of synth noise do nothing to save the situation. If this is an ode to happiness, there is nothing to confirm this except for Dan's looped sample — and even though there is quite a lot happening, as on every Caribou track (read here for an almost over-detailed deconstruction), the track leaves me completely uninvolved on an emotional level, which is a catastrophe.
Everything that follows is essentially more of the same mood: soft dance grooves with complex, but bland and generally predictable series of overdubs. ʽSecond Chanceʼ, with Jessy Lanza on vocals, melodically sounds like some lost Aaliyah outtake with a minimalistic synth trot pro­viding the bulk of the instrumentation — very, very boring. The title track is simply horrible, al­most completely undistinguishable from generic club muzak, and I don't care how many extra textures he throws in — the combination of that bass pulse with the man's falsetto aah-aahs shoots the lights out from both, and the results just sound stupid.
And I could go on, but I won't: let's just say that I fail to get the point of this kind of music — it's no less danceable, of course, than any other piece of music with a steady beat, but its artistic con­tent is completely compromised by the «applied» nature, and I would go as far as to say that its relation to genuinely gripping electronic dance music is about the same as Chubby Checker's relation to Chuck Berry; keeping in mind, of course, that there are plenty of people who'd actually prefer Chubby to Chuck, and, by analogy, there might be people around who will like Our Love more than Selected Ambient Works. In my personal paradigm, though, this counts as a generic sellout from yet another guy who decided that sounding «trendy» and «modern» should do more for his carma than investing his talent into creating true beauty. (Let alone the fact that I am not exactly sure in what way these beats, loops, and overdubs are «modern» for 2014, when all this and more has already been done in electronica many times over). A near-disgusted thumbs down. Bring back those Zombies rip-offs once more, comrade! Viva la Revolución!
CARLY RAE JEPSEN



TUG OF WAR (2008)
1) Bucket; 2) Tug Of War; 3) Money And The Ego; 4) Tell Me; 5) Heavy Lifting; 6) Sunshine On My Shoulders; 7) Worldly Matters; 8) Sweet Talker; 9) Hotel Shampoos; 10) Sour Candy.
Okay, one for the kids here. After all, now that we are in 2017 and Carly Rae Jepsen seems to have turned into one of the decade's flashier symbols, for better or for so much worse, it is fully legitimate to come out and ask — what's wrong with a bit of sweet, innocent, starry-eyed pop today? After all, simplistic teen entertainment is only as old as Buddy Holly, the Beatles, and the Beach Boys, and it's also cool to love all sorts of «twee» stuff nowadays, isn't it?..
There were, in fact, plenty of things to like about Carly Rae Jepsen in 2008, once you'd gotten over the fact that she came into the world out of the bowels of Canadian Idol. She was young, she was pretty, she had a nice voice, she knew (barely) how to play guitar, she wrote her own songs, and, perhaps most importantly, she did not try to present herself as the new Queen of Broken Hearts — as the title of the John Denver cover here suggests, she goes for sunshine rather than darkness, which is a good thing, because she looks like a person who prefers to live in the sunshine, and this makes the music more honest.
This is probably where the good things end, because I cannot see Carly Rae Jepsen as a good songwriter. The catchiest song is the opening number, ʽBucketʼ, a bumpy piece of acoustic ska with a good party-time chorus, but even that probably took thirty seconds to «write», apart from finding all the sand-related words. Everything else is totally mediocre folk-pop, livelied up with dance-oriented rhythm section work but never really getting out of the formula that was already well in action on Britney Spears' first album. Producer Ryan Stewart loyally sees to it that nothing and nobody gets in the way of the singer, and the singer gets by more on the strength of the little crispy rasp in her voice — sexy! — than anything else.
With records like these, there is usually no talk of being «impressive» — the choice is between dumb-annoying and tolerable, and, fortunately, Jepsen falls in the latter category. Her lyrics are just one notch above generic teen romance (she is careful enough to put up a few quasi-offensive lines from time to time, like "don't go out with the girls tonight / I will turn to drink / Wondering who you're screwing"), but one notch below the level where this crap becomes overwhelmingly pretentious — and her vocal attitude avoids excessive sex-doll posturing, staying at a comfortable angle where there's a good balance between sex and spirit. In fact, when she proclaims that "I've got to be sure there's more / Than the money and the ego" on one of the tracks, it's an almost be­lievable proclamation, hard as it is to take it from the mouth of a former Idol participant.
Considering how much of a folk-pop / country-pop slant this album has, comparisons with Taylor Swift would be inevitable — Jepsen would undergo the same transformation into an even glitzier electro-pop star even faster than Taylor — and there's really not that much difference, except that Jepsen's material seems a wee bit less calculated. The main problem with all this stuff is that, even with all the starry-eyed innocence, it still sounds as if the album doesn't really want to know if it wants to be a simple collection of dance-pop grooves or if it wants to be a «from-the-heart» type of statement. Jepsen herself has said that she is influenced by Cyndi Lauper and Joni Mit­chell — I mean, no shit, girl, but you really have to choose whose side you're on, because you still lack both the eccentricity of the former and the depth and musical talent of the latter. The result is... well, I'd say that the album's «good intentions» are really the only thing that saves it from being a total catastrophe. That and the fact that this is the first and last time you're gonna see and hear C. R. J. as a human being and not a cyborg, prior to, uhm, «assimilation». Also, stealing an album title from Paul McCartney? Not a cool move in my book.
KISS (2012)
1) Tiny Little Bows; 2) This Kiss; 3) Call Me Maybe; 4) Curiosity; 5) Good Time; 6) More Than A Memory; 7) Turn Me Up; 8) Hurt So Good; 9) Beautiful; 10) Tonight I'm Getting Over You; 11) Guitar String / Wedding Ring; 12) Your Heart Is A Muscle; 13*) Drive; 14*) Wrong Feels So Right; 15*) Sweetie; 16*) I Know You Have A Girl­friend; 17*) Almost Said It; 18*) Melt With You.
Call me arrogant, but I would like to make a bit of a difference in this world by saying that ʽCall Me Maybeʼ flat out sucks. I totally do not buy into the "yes, so it's fluffy, silly, and bubblegummy, but it's so CUTE! so CATCHY! so INNOCENT!" logic that I see espoused by many, many people, some of whom list Claude Debussy, Miles Davis, and Jeff Beck on their list of interests. Yes, sometime around late 2011 / early 2012 this track did take the world by storm, largely due to Justin Bieber promoting it (he totally would, too), and it does stick in your head fairly tightly upon one or two listens — largely because of the sharp production and obstinate repetitiveness of the chorus. Which does not prevent it from being a piece of crap.
I am not going to hold the fact that Carly Rae Jepsen was 26 years old when she wrote the song against her. For sure, Paul McCartney was working on The White Album and Brian Wilson had Pet Sounds and SMiLE behind his back at the age of 26, but there is nothing inherently wrong about people being stuck in a bubbly teenage warp for decades, certainly not in the 21st century, unless they are totally faking it, and it does not look like Carly is faking anything — on the con­trary, she sounds like she is totally reveling in this new, simplistic, primitive electro-pop vibe that seems to be influ­enced by the kawaii attitude of J-pop more than anything else. I mean, some people want to fill the world with silly love songs, and what's wrong with that? I need to know. Cause I just met you. And this is crazy.
I am, however, going to insist that the song is annoying as hell. One thing that could be great about early teen pop from the dawn of the Sixties is that, as innocent and sentimental as it was, it had a certain rebellious streak about it — even something like ʽSurfin'ʼ by the Beach Boys, which might not seem like something far superior melodically to ʽCall Me Maybeʼ, offered a tiny bit of a rock'n'roll challenge and an air of energy and freshness that captivated the young generation and set it apart from their parents. Later on, these same silly teen pop songs became fields for melodic and stylistic experimentation. Still much later on, with the advent of dance-pop and people like Madonna, although the emphasis once again shifted from melody to groove and visual presen­tation, the rebellious fire was rekindled on a new basis. But ʽCall Me Maybeʼ has none of these advantages whatsoever. It sounds silly without being ironic; catchy without being melodic; joy­ful without being motivated. I do not doubt for a second that there is a sound place in the 21st cen­tury for simple, silly pop, but this brand of simple, silly pop — especially presented in such an in-yer-face, obnoxious manner — is maybe just one step away from the likes of Rebecca Black. In fact, why was Rebecca Black so derided and Carly Rae Jepsen so praised? What exactly makes "It's Friday, Friday, gotta get down on Friday" so inferior to "Here's my number, so call me maybe"? If anything, at least Rebecca Black's lyrics thoroughly trump Carly Rae Jepsen in the grammatical department.
Honestly, I don't think that «normalizing» stuff like this (in the «come on, lighten up, it's just a fun pop song!» manner) is in any way more acceptable than «normalizing» racist talk and waterboar­ding — and I don't think that it is acceptable to see "here's my number, call me maybe" as 2012's answer to 1963's "she loves you yeah yeah yeah", either. Even completely vapor-headed, superficial bubblegum can still have inventive melodic potential or show a sense of humor; ʽCall Me Maybeʼ rides on four pseudo-string notes and takes itself pseudo-seriously, and I can't believe I already spent that much space and time writing about that shitty tune anyway.
The problem is not solved at all by having the other eleven songs scattered around ʽCall Me May­beʼ all sounding like its ideological and musical brethren. The distorted vocal sample of Sam Cooke's ʽTiny Little Bowsʼ that opens the record is, at best, just a superfluous quotation (if your song contains the word "bow", that is hardly a sufficient reason to sample a song that goes "Cu­pid, draw back your bow"), and at worst, a disgrace — I mean, where is Sam Cooke and where is Carly Rae Jepsen? And that production stile... don't even get me started. Yes, I know that mind-numbing techno beats and soulless robotic one-note synth patterns have been «normalized» even by much of the critically-minded population, but... no. Just no.
The second most popular song from the album was ʽGood Timeʼ, a duet with Owl City (and as such, also released on Owl City's Midsummer Station album) which — I do insist — is not one iota better than the Rebecca Black song, with which it even shares the main topic this time (partying partying YEAH!). Everything about it sucks — the lyrics, the vocals, the groove, the relentless pounding of the chorus hook, the fake steroidal optimism, the implied admonition to check your brain in the cloakroom before hitting the dance floor. Okay, so happy party anthems are not exactly my thing in the first place (I was never a big fan of KISS' ʽRock And Roll All Nightʼ, either), but happy party anthems that play it so clean and harmless make me feel trapped in a kindergarten.
Is there anything redeeming about this record (and I haven't even mentioned the inevitably vomit-inducing duet with Justin Bieber on ʽBeautifulʼ)? I honestly don't think so, and I have even been patient enough to sit through all the bonus tracks on the deluxe edition (spoiler: most of them are even more horrible than the regular inclusions). Some critics have raved about Carly's girl-next-door personality, but why should we get excited these days over a girl-next-door image, parti­cularly when the girl in question wishes to know nothing that goes above and beyond the con­cept of «having a good time»? It is true that she has intentionally cultivated an image here that steps away from the glitz and extravagance of her main competition in the bullshit-pop department, but there is nothing of interest whatsoever in that image, and the corny, glossy arrangements of her trivial hooks ruin all the «naturalness» anyway (besides, even visually she still looks like a fa­shion-obsessed doll rather than a plain clothes girl).
And no, I am definitely not pretending to dislike this out of some intellectual snobbery — thirty minutes of this music actually does give me a physical headache and leaves me wide open and vulnerable to in­doctrination by Scientology, the Islamic State, and Ray-Ban sunglasses, so excuse me if I rush this off with a well-timed thumbs down and hurry away to take a good dose of some powerfully intellectual antidote. Like Surfin' Safari by The Beach Boys. Or Boney M's Night­flight To Venus. Heck, even some Phil Collins will do. By the way, if you're making parodies or something, please take some time to craft an X-rated zombie version of "we don't even have to try, it's always a good time" — now that's something I wouldn't mind enjoying.
EMOTION (2015)
1) Run Away With Me; 2) Emotion; 3) I Really Like You; 4) Gimmie Love; 5) All That; 6) Boy Problems; 7) Making The Most Of The Night; 8) Your Type; 9) Let's Get Lost; 10) LA Hallucinations; 11) Warm Blood; 12) When I Needed You; 13*) Black Heart; 14*) I Didn't Just Come Here To Dance; 15*) Favourite Colour; 16*) Never Get To Hold You; 17*) Love Again; 18*) I Really Like You (Liam Keegan remix); 19*) Take A Picture.
This album, or, more accurately, the sometimes surprisingly exalted public reaction to this album, was, of course, what got me interested in Carly Rae Jepsen in the first place. Where ʽCall Me Maybeʼ had conquered the world in a blitzkrieg, but rather quickly fell off the radar once the initial orgasmic reaction had subsided, Emotion endured a stranger fate. Commercially, it was far less successful than Kiss — the public did not exactly hold its breath for a follow-up, and even in her native Canada, chart data for the LP and the accompanying singles were far more modest. But the critical response, on the other hand, was far more generous — and the album seems to have had a certain appeal for the indie community as well, which almost ended up welcoming Carly into their midst with open arms and comparisons to all sorts of twee pop idols. So what the hell happened here? An Awakening?..
First, let us see what exactly remained the same. In fact, come to think of it, most things have remained the same, and primarily this concerns the main subjects and moods of the record: Jep­sen is still functioning in precisely the same exhilarated, vapor-headed teen-crush mode as she did before, despite hitting 30 in 2015 (no doubt about it, eternal childhood is a wonderful thing, but I do shudder a little bit trying to imagine CRJ belting out ʽCall Me Maybeʼ thirty years from now on her Farewell Cougar Tour). But that was never a big problem on its own, as long as the songs delivered the feel of a real personality behind them — the problem was the coating, and that prob­lem, unfortunately, remains unresolved: Jepsen's production standards remain generally unaltered, relying on unadventurous electronic rhythms and drum programming.
This time around, however, there is a more distinct nostalgic twist to these arrangements, with most of the melodies influenced even more directly by Eighties synth-pop than the ones on Kiss. At its best, the record hobbles somewhere in between early Depeche Mode and classic ABC, with a decent mix of guitars, keyboards, and synthesized percussion; also, there is more stylistic variety, making it much less of a headache than the relentless jackhammer dance pummeling of Kiss. At the same time, there is visibly more care taken about the vocal melodies — harmonies and hooks run galore, and they all serve the record's chief purpose, which is to show you, the jaded cynical listener, all the innocent beauty and adrenaline-soaked excitement of a modern day Juliet over a modern day Romeo. What, you don't believe in Romeos and Juliets these days? Shame on you! Unlike yourself, Carly Rae Jepsen studies her Shakespeare diligently.
Seriously, I totally concur that Emotion is a huge step forward for Miss Canada, even if that by no means makes it a modern day pop masterpiece. The biggest obstacle is that the lady remains a one-trick pony if there ever was one, as is easily ascertained by the album's only attempt at a slow, sensual love ballad — ʽAll Thatʼ sounds exactly like fifty million hookless, plastic adult con­temporary ballads written in the Eighties and long since relegated to the compost heat. She might have done a little bit of something with that tune, were she Whitney Houston, but she is just a 15-year old insecure girl trapped in the body of a 30-year old woman, and the whole thing is a dis­aster that actually makes me wish she'd never grow up — she has about as much understanding of «slow and soulful» as your average AC/DC vocalist.
Fortunately, the bulk of the album follows the formula of ʽI Really Like Youʼ: upbeat, bouncy, and gambling it all away on vivacious, exhilarated vocal hooks. The song itself clearly aimed at repeating the formula of ʽCall Me Maybeʼ, but the chorus probably failed to appeal to a core audience of 12-year old braindeads — it's as bubblegum as they come, but a little more anthemic and a little less flat-out in-yer-face; also, a bit more grammatical, a tad more sensual, and with a nicer, better defined melodic line in the chorus, considering that the "really really really" bit ma­na­ges not to be so utterly annoying in terms of modulation. If you can forget the thoroughly ludi­crous video with Tom Hanks lip-syncing to Carly's vocal part (nobody needs to see it, but every­body needs to see this insightful Bart Baker parody which logically explains everything that needs to be explained), it's, like, almost a good song!
And yes, there is actually some material here that's even better — provided you can get it out of its context, which, for me, is very painful to do — but ʽRun Away With Meʼ, even despite the awful synth tones, has wonderful harmonies ("run away with me! run away with me!" is deli­vered in an unbeatable excited tone that really touches base with reality); ʽYour Typeʼ has a few delicious ABBA-esque lines ("I'm not the type of girl you call more than a friend", for some rea­son, gets to me and even matches its nervous accompanying synth pulsation); and the best is saved for last — ʽWhen I Needed Youʼ is the most infectious piece on the entire record, due to the clever juxtaposition of falsetto ooh-ooh-ooh's and cheerleaderish hey!'s.
I have no idea, and no desire to find out, who is behind all the vocal creativity on the album (Carly herself or one of the ten billion producers listed in the notes), but I definitely see a time and a context in which these ideas could have been realized in a near-perfect pop record. Unfortu­nately, 2015 and a mainstream marketing strategy are quite far removed from that time and con­text, because outside of the vocal hooks, it's like the only thing they look for in the actual music is «make it loud / make it bubbly / make it danceable» — not really taking home any of those les­sons from either Depeche Mode or ABC that musicianship is not to be neglected. I mean, come on, even if it is synth-pop, what is it about relying exclusively on boring stock phrasing? There's not a single memorable synth riff on the entire album — have these people never listened to, oh, I dunno, ʽMaster And Servantʼ, for instance? Somebody make CRJ listen to ʽMaster And Servantʼ, real quick. If nothing else, she might at least get into BDSM for a change.
All the indie hype over the album may be due to the fact that a combination of twee pop purity, Eighties' synth-pop nostalgia, and a girl-next-door attitude (without any of the Miley / Katy / Taylor glamstravagance) is precisely what the doctor ordered for those 21st century pop lovers who combine refined demands with a subconscious desire for some good old simplicity-stupidity. Well — there you go: Emotion is simple and silly enough without being obnoxiously stupid or suffocatingly cheap (though by my own standards, it is still fairly cheap). I can take it as suffici­ent proof that commercial bubblegum can still be vital and inoffensive in our times, and at least I'll take Emotion over any J-pop or K-pop album any time of day. But if you think I can be char­med by this record into giving it a thumbs up, you got another think coming.
PS. Oh, and don't worry about the deluxe edition — I've listened to these bonus tracks, and they mostly sound like outtakes from The Kiss, very bland and colorless compared to the hooks and harmonies of the main disc. (For that matter, I really hate this practice which is so common now­adays. «Deluxe» treatment should be given to 40th anniversary special editions — let's see if Emotion ever lives up to those regal honors).
EMOTION: SIDE B (2016)
1) First Time; 2) Higher; 3) The One; 4) Fever; 5) Body Language; 6) Cry; 7) Store; 8) Roses.
This collection of alleged outtakes from the Emotion sessions, unlike the small bunch of tracks appended to the deluxe edition of Emotion proper, was apparently thought by Carly to merit its own release — apparently, she has a pretty high opinion of herself as one of her generation's primary pop songwriters, and now that Emotion began to gain traction even in certain intellectual circles, she wasted no time following it up with an EP (27 minutes long, which is still longer than your average Beach Boys pop album from 1963) whose purpose is (a) to demonstrate that Carly Rae Jepsen is ON A ROLL!!!, (b) to demonstrate that Carly Rae Jepsen can write DARK DISTURBING SYNTH POP like a modern day Depeche Madonna.
Indeed, there is a more pronounced retro-Eighties feel here than on Emotion itself, with lots of bare-bones bubbly funky synth rhythms and straightforward, pre-house era beats, as if somebody just wanted to get rid of all that complicated baggage and direct modern day computers to return us back to a simpler, more innocent era of crap music making. But since we have Carly Rae Jep­sen behind the wheel here, don't really think of the highest possible associations — think more, like, umm... Bananarama? Nah, too gay. Anyway, all or most of these songs are: atmospherically troubled, melodically unchallenging, emotionally uninvolving, but catchy enough so as not to be a complete waste of time.
One song that I really like here, where I feel she's accidentally latched onto a bit of something special, is ʽCryʼ. Beginning deceptively, with a simple palette of cloudlike Enya-lite synthesizers, it quickly establishes a dark highway groove, and rides it all the way to the classy hook where the tension of the verse and the bridge is released upwards with a sensuous breathy falsetto. Simple, clever, and slightly Gothic in execution, we have her channelling some dream pop influences here to success — too bad that that's about it, and the song never capitalizes on its single hook idea to deepen the emotional impact. But I guess even that kind of thing is a huge achievement.
Everything else is rather basic dance-pop in the end, and, as usual, much weakened by the lack of interesting musical ideas — everything is invested in the singing, oh, and, to get you to groove as if it were 1983 all over again. (But where's the frizzed hair and the fishnet gloves?). As for the alleged emotional darkness, well, it's not really intentional: by the time we get around to the infec­tious chorus of "I'm just going' to the store, to the store", you can sort of guess that this is an accurate reflection of the real psychological depth of this record. But it is infectious. It should also have ended the record, instead of ʽRosesʼ, another attempt to slow things a bit, concentrate on romance and sentimentality, and end up with a song that, like ʽAll Thatʼ on Emotion, shows that Carly Rae Jepsen and non-dance-oriented ballads go together about as naturally as Elton John with nuclear physics.
Overall, a few good moments (and I'd definitely cut out ʽCryʼ as one of the nicest ideas of 2016), but if you read or heard somewhere something along the lines of how Emotion: Side B gives you a deeper, darker, more mature Carly Rae Jepsen, please take a moment to run some of your favorite deep, dark, mature artists through your brains — and avoid falling victim to the spells of the treache­rous Pseudo-Progressive Evil Fairy of Pop Crap Normalization. In the end, Carly Rae Jepsen is still little more than a 3D, 1920x1080 improved version of Britney Spears, albeit with more self-respect and, perhaps, a slightly better understanding of her own limitations.

CASS McCOMBS