Nicole Atkins first LP is chocked full of bombastic torch songs formed from seventies pop/rock, fifties melodies and backing vocals, occasional modernist orchestration, and Atkins’ Grease-ready alto that somehow manages to stay bigger than her over-stuffed tunes. The whole effect is closest to Queen in outright outrageousness and sheer fun.
She kicks it off with “Maybe Tonight”, an Abba rip-off that 
is just begging for roller skates and a mirror ball. “I search the dial for what I need to know,’ she sings, “They don’t play those songs on my radio.” It’s as if she takes this as a challenge. Standout “The Way It Is” is a slowly building, simmering lament on a relationship that she knows is going bad but can’t bring herself to get out of. “Brooklyn’s on Fire” manages to embody the sheer exuberance of being young in a big city and the sadness of that, with the refrain “Fourth of July, Brooklyn’s on Fire” sung/yelled by what sounds like a group of kids punctuating the verses. These songs beg for and reward a good system turned all the way up.
Like pop music in a parallel universe, Atkins sounds immediately familiar and like nothing else. In an age of mash-ups where genre-bending is the order not the exception, once in a blue moon does anything comes along that sounds this excitingly different. An enthusiastic B+. (Lawyer, you'll hate this. Stewardess, you'll love it)
Download: Maybe Tonight, The Way It Is, Neptune City, and Brooklyn’s on Fire
Friday, November 2, 2007
Nicole Atkins, Neptune City, B+
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2 comments:
When you reference Grease, Queen and Abba in a review, you've hit on a trifecta of campy crappy music that I can't begin to explain how much I hate. But, thanks for the review...you love your female singer/songwriters.
Listened to it, loved it, got it.
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