M.I.A.'s Kala tears the roof off
Maxwell Matthews
Issue date: 9/28/07 Section: Entertainment
- < prev Page 2 of 2
One of the album's many collaborative highlights is M.I.A.'s spitting session with the aboriginal Australian hip-hop group, the Wilcannia mob. It doesn't matter that every member of the Wilcannia mob is around 10-years-old, their inchoate raps are silly and imaginative, and M.I.A. manages to keep up with their tales of stilts and Jackie Chan.
M.I.A.'s last album, Arular, was a confident slice of militant electronic dance music. The influence of her estranged Sri Lankan rebel father, the album's namesake, broods all over the record. Kala's sound has the same blunt force impact, but it doesn't seem to have the heavy atmosphere of Arular.
On Kala, M.I.A. pulls out all the stops to blow her listeners away - pay attention and you'll hear the Clash, New Order, the Pixies, stories of love, stories of robbing to survive and, most importantly of all, an artist doing her "own thing."
But why does all this matter? As another great musical mish-masher once said, "It's cheaper to funk than it is to pay attention." If you don't like your dance music too heady, M.I.A. is not for you. But if you want a concise, elegant overview of what you might be dancing your ass off to in the next four or five years, Kala should do the trick.
M.I.A.'s last album, Arular, was a confident slice of militant electronic dance music. The influence of her estranged Sri Lankan rebel father, the album's namesake, broods all over the record. Kala's sound has the same blunt force impact, but it doesn't seem to have the heavy atmosphere of Arular.
On Kala, M.I.A. pulls out all the stops to blow her listeners away - pay attention and you'll hear the Clash, New Order, the Pixies, stories of love, stories of robbing to survive and, most importantly of all, an artist doing her "own thing."
But why does all this matter? As another great musical mish-masher once said, "It's cheaper to funk than it is to pay attention." If you don't like your dance music too heady, M.I.A. is not for you. But if you want a concise, elegant overview of what you might be dancing your ass off to in the next four or five years, Kala should do the trick.
