Cibelle "The Shine of Dead Electric Leaves"

This is my first post on an ostensibly record-review oriented blog.

Apparently, this album is Cibelle's move to break out of the international electronical lounge ghetto, and good for her for making that move. I heard some samples from her first full-length, and while I am ignorant of the genre and closed-minded about it, I would say thank f*cking god. It exudes a sense of liberal, easy-going, self-satisfaction. There seemed to be nothing challenging about it. A product designed as a musical acoutremant for a market-researched audience, like a "funky" lamp from Unban Outfitters: "Come over to my place, we can drink wine out of my new Ikea glasses, burn some incence, and listen to some loungey down-tempo music that exudes a vague sense of international cool - while we chat and laugh!"

On "The Shine of Dead Electric Leaves" she seems to be going for some sonic textues more interesting than the soundtracks to yuppies' cocktail parties. The percussions kind of bounce around a lot from the background into the foreground, ping-ponging off the acoustics, creating a somewhat abstract melange with the gurgling electronics and processed vocals and harmonies.

On top of it all is her voice, though. She's a lovely and soulful singer, which I haven't made peace with yet. Sometimes it strikes me as something that smoothes out the music too much, milk-soaks it to absoluely make sure the music qualifies as "soulful", and goes down easy. But these are the pangs I go through with modern music of this type due to my predilection for the 'atonal'. Broadening my horizons is not usually an easy experience.

Though sometimes she does veer into outter territories of the banal.

P.S. I have just viewed the video made of 'London, London' the Caetano Veloso cover on the album, feat. Devendra Banhardt. Even before I saw the vid, this was fast becoming my least favorite song on the album. While Banhardt pulls off a nice approximation of the Veloso aura circa 1970 ( when the song was recorded ), the video doesn't really pull anything off, except a charming ending.