All grown up
24 Nov 2007 Leave a Comment
in 2007, Girls Aloud, music, pop, popular music, top ten, UK pop
Hello! Welcome to my brand new blog which will basically be an out and out review of the latest albums out there in the pop world. Sometimes I may also talk about TV programmes and films I’ve watched, if they’re any good.
Girls Aloud – Tangled Up
Back at the beginning of the year when Girls Aloud teamed up with the Sugababes for the Comic Relief 2007 single, people were really excited because it was a collaboration between two of the country’s biggest girl groups. No one had thought a pairing of the two could work; it would either sound impossibly forced or completely lazy, and they would never get on with each other anyway. But it worked perfectly, in the end, becoming possibly one of the better Comic Relief singles in the charity’s twenty year history. I would venture that the most exciting thing about it is that it was a collaboration between the ONLY two big British girl groups. I would also venture that if the two were in competition, Girls Aloud would come out on top as the best girly group out there at the moment.
Anyone who doesn’t believe me should listen to their sublime new album, Tangled Up. There are no token ballads to be heard on this CD, thank God. They’ve been going for so long now that they must have been allowed to do what they like with this LP, and you can tell. Ditching all blandness in favour of experimental retro beats, the Girls Aloud machine has produced the closest thing to pop perfection any act under the management of Louis Walsh will ever get. Kicking off with new single Call The Shots, GA waste no time in establishing the fact that they mean business when it comes to relationships and love. No man will call the shots over these girls, if the self assured, intelligent lyrics of the song are to be believed.
Next we have Close To Love, one of my favourite songs on the album. Here is the first hint that the Girls are aiming for a 90′s feel at the moment; traces of acid house permeate the track which is at heart an icy cool disco stomper about getting down in the club. It would be a crime for them not to release this as a single. It’s a surefire hit if ever there was one.
Up next is September’s lead single, Sexy No No No. Probably the weirdest song of the year, it overuses vocoders and bass guitars but the girls’ angelic voices and mature delivery help the song to get away with its sheer freakiness.
Track no.4, Girl Overboard, starts off with some misleadingly emotional guitars, giving the impression that we’re about to hear a traditional girly ballad, but the beat soon kicks in and we have another hi-NRG disco number on our hands. Next up is Can’t Speak French, which is as engaging as its name suggests. It’s hard to determine what the song is actually supposed to be about, but that doesn’t matter as the edgy, vaguely experimental backing track kind of puts you in mind of something that would have been played at some uber-cool underground club in the mid 80′s.
Track no.6, Black Jacks, is the one you should skip straight to if you have no intention of trawling through the whole album. Like something that would have been released by a retro American girl band in the mid 90′s, this song seeps into your soul. I have not been able to stop thinking about it! The sunny lyrics, crashing electric drums and anthemic strings are a killer combination and if this becomes one of the eventual releases, it wouldn’t be out of place at the top of the charts.
Control of the Knife is another one of those tunes that makes you think the Girls have decided to indulge their 90′s-loving inner children on this album. Starting off with the Englishman In New York melody, it might give you a bit of a worry to begin with, but it quickly becomes another infectious little ditty with a dirty ska melody and pumping beat that would have gone down very well at any early 90′s rave. Nicola’s sexy rap-singing in the middle lifts it above many proper dance records.
Fling is a reminder of all the songs that gave Girls Aloud their initial success. Hints of No Good Advice, Something Kinda Oooh and Wake Me Up reside here, and that really isn’t a bad thing. It would make a very reliable floorfiller at G-A-Y.
What You Crying For comes as a shock to the system; as soon as the drum and bass breakbeat kicks in you’d be forgiven for wondering if it was a mistake. But it really is Girls Aloud, and it really is good – without the classic self assured GA harmonies it would be a fairly average garage track reserved for Pirate FM, but the five voices laid on top singing about relationship woes in the noughties make it something very special and different. Let’s face it, what other girl group could get away with doing drum and bass?
I’m Falling continues the dirty drum and bass theme, and I have to admit I laughed on first listen, thinking that the first line was saying: ‘When I was young I wanted to be a trucker.’ Did you really, Cheryl? I wouldn’t be surprised. Ultimately this is another one of my favourites on the album – completely infectious, not too heavy for repeat listens and not too light either.
Damn is another more typical Girls Aloud offering, handing us a slice of 80′s prog-rock mixed with Hey Mickey!-esque lyrics on a neon-coloured plate. For that reason I didn’t really like this one when I first heard it, but now I would say it was a definite grower. Finally, we have Crocodile Tears which is as close to pop ballad territory as the album gets. I suppose it’s in their contract to do one, though you can tell they’ve tried really hard with this one not to offer us the usual slushy ballad about broken hearts and boyfriends. And that’s what I love about Girls Aloud – they refuse to be categorised. At least, anyone who buys their albums would know that. Over all, this album gets a 9 out of 10 from me. It’s brash, intelligent and thoroughly addictive. I’ve listened to it about three times today alone. If you want proof that British girl groups can be grown up and original, go out there and buy Tangled Up!
Next week: Kylie Minogue’s X! Yay!
