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Album Review: Britney Spears – Femme Fatale

I like to treat Britney Spears’ albums as collaborative science projects from various songwriters, producers, audio engineers, and other creative individuals in the music industry. She doesn’t write any of her lyrics, she doesn’t do a lot of her own backup vocals, hell, she doesn’t even dance anymore, but because of her and everyone around her – every single Britney record comes off as an extremely solid attempt at energetic, carefully mapped out Pop music.

FIRST, LET’S GET THIS VERY OBVIOUS ISSUE OFF THE TABLE. IS IT LOUD IN HERE OR IS IT JUST ME? NO, YOU HEAR IT TOO? OKAY. GOOD. FEMME FATALE IS AN EXTREMELY COMPRESSED RECORD WHICH IS SOMETHING THAT HAS BASICALLY BECOME A TRADEMARK INSIDE MAJOR RECORD LABEL TOP 40 MUSIC – ESPECIALLY THEIR KEY ARTISTS. LET ME TURN DOWN THE VOLUME SO I CAN STOP SCREAMING AT YOU.

Interestingly enough, when taking a listen between Femme Fatale up against albums like Christina Aguilera’s Bionic (which only scored DR 6 on the Unofficial Dynamic Range Database, while Britney’s last record Circus rated a healthy DR8), Britney’s record holds a nice amount of punch, groove, and feeling over a few of her pop contemporaries. You wouldn’t think that Team Spears would care much about taking time to ensure our ears aren’t bleeding from the inside out, but they do and it’s much appreciated. In fact, the only time loudness is a negative thing on this record are the less layered tracks “Gasoline” and “Criminal”.

Why you would have all the instruments pushing as hard as they can with a vocal soaring above all of it on a song as well put together as “Criminal” is beyond me, but in terms of songwriting and instrumentation, this is one of the winners of the album. It’s straight traditional 21st century folk-pop in the vein of early Cher & Music era Madonna.

The true winner? The Rodney Jerkins produced “He About to Lose Me”. The song takes a rather sparse approach to production (basic percussion loop, nice repetitive guitar sounds, and a slow evolving Synth) and beautiful vocals provided by the song’s co-writer Ina Wroldsen (as well as Michaela Shiloh). And are you ready for the killer? Jerkins tweeted that there is absolutely no Autotune on Britney Spears’ vocals on this track! A treat for our ears in an audio world that is absolutely drenched in perfection because of the Antares plugin.

Vocal effects aren’t always the bane of our ears existence as shown in the Robyn-esque “How I Roll”, which displays a playful pitch-bend and time stretched vox . The Will.I.Am penned “Big Fat Bass” also falls in this category. Even though the track suffers from a headache inducing bass (which is somehow the point of the song?) Britney’s vocals are cleverly wet with Autotune and have boosts in the higher frequencies of her voice that give a nice contrast to the high-energy buildup in the song’s low end.

Overall? Don’t hold this review against me. We aren’t listening to Bach. Femme Fatale is a pop record and accomplishes all the things a modern pop record symbolizes.

Album rating: 3/5

Purchase Femme Fatale Deluxe Edition [Amazon]
Purchase Femme Fatale Standard Edition [Amazon]

Album Review: Radiohead – The King of Limbs

To say Radiohead doesn’t cater to almost everyone’s personal listening preferences would be a lie. 2011’s The King of Limbs follows suit with it’s preceded In Rainbows in that they both share innovation in their distribution. While Rainbows allowed you to name your own price, with several options for physical copies, Limbs provided a spreadsheet of set prices and formats to choose from, including WAV or MP3, or a “newspaper album” that featured two vinyl’s, photographs, and a CD.

However, even given the option of going with consumer or audiophile methods, there are several complaints that the album’s mixing and mastering is not handled with much love. More often than not, the bass (and at times percussion and Thom Yorke’s vocal) is over-compressed and high in the mix, causing problems on the more experimental tracks like “Feral,” which suffers from a lack of build throughout the song’s barely three minute run. “Bloom” & “Give Up the Ghost” also degrade from this decision, having the songs sound loud from start to finish, creating issues in the albums fluidity into the next track.

Although the Unofficial Dynamic Range Data base gives the album a rating of DR5, loudness is not always a negative thing or that big of an issue. Compression and EQ thrive through most of the percussion, aiding the rhythms with quick and effective punch (see “Separator”). The mixing also provides a nice foundation for tracks which give different instruments time and space as the lead single “Lotus Flower” proves. Lotus defines an in-your-face bass as the main groove, and allows electronics/Thom’s processed voice to duck in and out of the forefront of the mix when necessary.

Leaving alone the technicalities of the disc, The King of Limbs on it’s own is quite beautiful. The gloomy tale, emotional piano, and beautiful string arrangement by The London Telefilmonic Orchestra, makes up “Codex”‘s blue state and is easily one of many shining moments throughout the record’s 37 minutes.

37 minutes? Yes, but it doesn’t feel like it. These are 8 wonderful tracks that sit nicely in Radiohead’s eclectic catalog and the “Lotus Flower” video will forever be a staple in 21st century music videos.

Album rating: 3.5/5

Purchase The King of Limbs [Radiohead’s Website]
Purchase The King of Limbs [Amazon]