Singling Out 2008: Duffy, Solange Knowles, Delta Goodrem, Shwayze, more

Solange Knowles, "Sandcastle Disco" (No. 29 on Blender list)
Okay, I lied. I did listen to Solange's album a couple of times. And she definitely has something going for her -- her spoken soul-rants are neat diversions, and some of the "jazzy" parts work up a lush groove, and hooks stolen from the Supremes are still hooks, and there's passable funky space reincarnation music toward the end of the record. But her songs don't generally click for me as songs -- her voice is just serviceable, so perhaps that's part of the problem. And I really don't get why some people hear her as a crazy wacky weirdo; she just strikes me as the latest in a long line of R&B singers with conceptual ambitions toward a kind of quasi-bohemian classiness I've never particularly cared about. (Teena Marie had similar ambitions, but she had a lot more than that.) For the most part, her music strikes as hard to grasp ahold of. Still. This song is certainly catchy and revolves around a simple but creative idea (see also: "Castles Made of Sand," Jimi Hendrix), which Solange puts over in a warmer and more straightforward manner than her big sister probably would, plus there's cute electro blips. So, I'm probably just wrong about her.

Duffy, "Mercy" (No. 31)
Some subliminal "I've Got to Use My Imagination" in the throb. Except that was a great song, and this is just a few tired old tropes mimed for the coffee shop. Also, Duffy's voice is really squeaky; has anybody mentioned that? Hard to hate, though. Lisa Stansfield lives. Or Swing Out Sister. Or Yazz. Remember her? Me neither.

Wolf Parade, "Language City" (No. 41)
Male nebbish voice allergic to color and humor, though maybe occasionally turning sarcastic like some third-tier '80s AOR-folk guy. (Timbuk 3 or David and David minus hooks?) Lounge-jazz keyboard runs. Whistling. Kitschy plinky sounds out of the space-age bachelor pad. The song goes absolutely nowhere, just kind of drifts, then the plinks disappear and the drift gets even emptier, and then the tempo picks back up a little (from dead-in-the-water to merely draggy) and the singer repeats select random lines in a failed bid for intensity. Is the lyrical thesis closer to Laurie Anderson's "Language Is a Virus", or the Pretenders' "My City Was Gone," or neither? Who cares? This stinks.

Benji Hughes, "You Stood Me Up" (No. 49)
I've never even heard of this long-haired fellow before; apparently he's a North Carolinian employed by New West Records, which might explain why this track seems to occupy the same general sonic terrain as some of Drive-By Truckers' slower and more snooze-worthy numbers. Except I gather this is a joke song, since a girl breaks a date with Benji by pretending she's got bronchitis, and another ditches him at Dairy Queen. But joke songs should never be this slow. Benji's low-register croaking seems to be aiming for soul music, but comes out more like bad Jonathan Richman. The higher background chorus contributes a smidgen of buoyancy.

Delta Goodrem, "In This Life" (No. 80)
Starts breathy, then takes wing and flies. Down Under's answer to Celine Dion? Except not half as earth-shattering, lungwise, as Celine is. Which, in this case, might not be a bad thing. Generic old-school adult-contemporary (i.e., not "adult-alternative") power ballad, but with sufficient exposure, it's conceivable that I could learn to like it a lot. Doubt it could ever really mean anything to me, though.

Vivian Girls, "Tell The World," (No. 116)
Blurry guitars, inept non-drumming, buried vocal harmonies curdling through the fog, from three Brooklyn babes. Not nearly as crunchy or boppy as I'd been led to believe. Haven't-learned-our-instruments-yet routine might be supposed to make this charming in a Shaggs or Raincoats or Scrawl sense, but it'd help if there was something unexpected in the way they haven't learned their instruments yet. (Compare: weirdly fiddled Portland trio the New Bloods, whose The Secret Life ranks among my favorite albums of 2008.) Then again, I never cared about Bratmobile much, either. Song redeemed slightly by hiding remnants of the B-52s' "52 Girls" in its melody.

Shwayze, "Buzzin'" (No. 128)
This bugs me less if I think of it as L.F.O. nostalgia than if I think of it as Sugar Ray nostalgia. But L.F.O. had funnier words. (So did Crazy Town.)