Vicky sez: "You can't throw me."
Hmmmmmmmmm.
HMMMMMMMMM.
So Ashlee's on her third album, and I gotta say, I'm giving her a lot of credit just for pulling it off. First listen was impressive, second listen is tempered with opinions of two colleagues I trust -- Frank Kogan and Jimmy Draper -- feeling more ambivalent than I seemed to be. But I'm rarely disappointed by an album that clicks, even a bit, on first listen. Which is to say, I already know I like the album, but maybe a rundown will help articulate why.
Dance stuff: "Outta My Head," "Boys," "Rule Breaker," "Hot Stuff," arguably "Murder."
Nia was spot-on in seeing Ashlee as a 21st century Roxie Hart in this one -- Ashlee says just that in a recent interview, and even if she's not literally doing the Vicky Valentine dual persona thing, some kind of new personality, nu-Ashlee, is here, and mostly old-Ashlee is kept under the surface, both in terms of depth and earnestness.
I really like "Boys," even tough it admittedly sounds like a second-shelf Jessica Simpson material (of course, important to remember here that most of Jessica Simpson's material is THIRD-shelf Jessica Simpson material); "Outta My Head" ingratiated itself pretty easily after some initial resistance, and with that I kind of had some terms on which to judge Vicky, though with time I've found more Ashlee-as-I-know-her in it, unlike "Rule Breaker" which strikes me as 100% Vicky).
(Side note while I'm still re-skimming the three tracks I knew really well: in the time between hearing I Am Me for the first time and now, I've spent an inordinate amount of time with Ashlee's first album, Autobiography, and relatively little with her second album, the one that kind of got me into her to begin with. So it colors my expectations in a weird way -- I forget that retroactively, trying to piece together Ashlee's career to date, I Am Me feels distinctly like a holding pattern with a few lighter tracks, and whatever else this album is, it's not a holding pattern. I think it's to her credit that it's not a failure, since her range as an artist seemed almost impossibly narrow until now.)
"Hot Stuff," a funny, weird little dance number, very similar to the stuff from Katy Rose's Candy Eyed. Alice in Wonderland breakdown, stays bugged-out throughout and might be an under-the-radar favorite. All Vicky. "Murder" sounds better than I remember it sounding, but Frank is right that it suffers from a much more boring rap shat out by Timbaland instead of the batshit "O.J. is my favorite Simpson" verse by Gym Class Hero Travis McCoy.
Rockers: "No Time for Tears," "Ragdoll," "Bittersweet World," "What I've Become"
Hm, not sure how to classify "Tears." Starts with some electro burping, turns into a pretty standard rocker -- barely scratches the surface of dusting herself off and trying again. Has a kind of perpetual low-key energy that, say, "I Am Me" wouldn't have worked with -- just kind of coasts, but doesn't sit there like a glob. But the fact that I could suggest it might sit like a glob suggests that it's skirting glob. Still, she's globbed before -- "In Another Life" comes to mind. (But I guess comparing this to my least favorite of her songs isn't quite fair, and it's still not particularly strong.)
"Ragdoll" is Roxie, "why you gotta throw me around like a ragdoll?" Ummmmmm, because it's what you said ya wanted in "La La"! Er, no. But you definitely get the sense of a persona again here; not the same Ashlee who sang "La La." First of all it's sharp and punchy, guitars pasted in as accents more than providing the meat on the skeleton of the song (the bones are showing here) and she's a little devilish -- Vicky's sort of a demon-pixie, but Ashlee's too everywoman for this kind of prancing around; even when she's being fun she stomps a little. No stomping here, especially on the title track, a weak tossed-off swing, strangely lacking in any semblance of bass -- why not just go flat-out upright on it? Seems like a bit of an awkward compromise between Roxie and Vicky, but it's a nice enough tune. Feels particularly alien, though, a kind of extension of her (swingless) "Why Don't You Do Right" I saw her do live that wants that much depth and isn't getting it. Actually, I bet Amy Diamond could pull this off pretty well, but it begs for a kind of Broadway elbow grease Ashlee probably doesn't have in her.
"What I've Become" is unapologetic power pop that almost lets the Shanks wall-of-guitar seep in at the chorus but ultimately backs off. Don't see as how the Shanks signature would help it any -- this is probably the only rocker that really tries to find the middleground between Vicky and Ashlee, and...I dunno, I guess I don't buy it. One thing I like about this album is that it's not afraid of meticulousness -- the arrangements are precise, relatively spare (despite the thick-spread power-pop synths on this one). To recycle a phrase I once used to describe the Mooney Suzuki's makeover with the Matrix, you can bounce a quarter off these tunes, and I think she handles it pretty well (unlike Mooney Suzuki, say).
Ballads: "Little Miss Obsessive," "Never Dream Alone"
"Obsessive" is probably the closest to old-Ashlee we get on this one, and it's telling that to me she sounds a little out of place -- she brings in Plain White T's dude, "got in a fight with myself," right, so why the hell bring in the actual GUY? This isn't even a particularly guy-centric post-breakup? "Why does it have to be so unfair, tell me that you care" is like something an Ashlee-lite might come up with, but you get none of her ambivalence. She sounds like a baby; what happened to "my feet are on the ground even though I'm stuck?"
"Never Dream Alone," too calculated, too meta-level "this is my closing ballad." Vicki tries her hand at "Say Goodbye" and kind of, like, fails. But it's a pleasant enough outro, I guess...
...So the final verdict, I think, is there's a lot of concept here, but not a whole lot of ideas. Ashlee works best in aggregate -- the way her songs plunge into the middle of a story (even when she's introducing herself) and lets you kind of tread water for yourself if you feel like putting in the time. Which most people don't, but I guess that's neither here nor there. Anyway, there's no treading water here -- neither in the production, which is precisely layered -- from her vocals to the guitar itself, which used to just slather itself over the track and here is leveled to equal everything else just another weapon in the production arsenal -- nor in the concept, which gives you the idea of a character but not much of an idea of a person (unless you already knew her, in which case it's pretty obvious that the real person is playing dress-up).
It works. I like it, too, it does what I think Skye Sweetnam's album didn't quite achieve last year, which is throw a million small ideas into a blender, up the production values (or at least signifier of production values -- something more like "studio tricks" -- since the literal prod. values on her other two albums are quite high) and hope everyone makes it out OK. They do, but I can't help but think, as a sorta representative example here, that I could listen to "Shadow," think about it pretty intently, and not even notice that there was a STRING SECTION weeping behind her the whole time. It just wasn't a big deal (Ashlee yawning in studio); here everything is a big deal except for the album itself. They may have kept "I'm Out" off the thing just because it's so casual, there's nothing particularly remarkable on the face of it. But then, there's nothing remarkable anywhere in it. (And Autobiography is remarkable in part because it's so doggedly unremarkable on a gloss-over; not bad, but not screaming for attention -- even when it is ["La La," maybe "Autobiography" to some extent].)
Vicky likes to shriek and flirt and, uh, contort for attention, but she doesn't really deserve that much thought. She's not really asking for it. But then, I don't find myself thinking about much of I Am Me, either, and that's (almost) all Ashlee -- it's a reiteration of a few of the themes with a little bit more fun ("Boyfriend," "L.O.V.E.," maybe "I Am Me" in its own way) and a few major surprises ("Say Goodbye," maybe "Dancing Alone"). But breaking this one down, I'm giving Vicky about 6 out of 11 tracks, with two-three theatrical indulgences, another two-three simple-pleasure dance tracks. Ashlee/Vicky gets, say, four -- "Outta My Head" (the only dance track that really strikes me as not just goofing around), "What I've Become," and maybe "No Time for Tears" or "Murder." Which basically leaves "Little Miss Obsessive," the only straight-up Ashlee track, and I've got my own problems with it (basically, sounds like Ashlee stuck, with useless schlub partner, in a Vicky approximation of an Ashlee production).
BUT, and this is where I'm a little disappointed (I still think the album itself is generally a hoot) I am getting a pretty strong sense that an awful lot of Ashlee-as-I-know-her is an awful lot of Kara-as-I-like-her-most. And both of them have been frivolous, and sound like they're settling. Which, hell, isn't so bad. But in the whole social distinction/subgenre/whatever, I'm projecting my highest expectations onto them. So when they just want to fuck around, I find myself feeling impatient, if amused. I just hope there's more for them to say, but maybe this is one of the pitfalls of figuring out your way to something two years late and expecting to get a shot at really living the experience again, especially since the terms of that experience are to a large degree determined by investing a lot retroactively into a moment I felt must have just passed me. ***1/2
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