Pharrell – 'GIRL' album review

The hitmaker shows his age with a conservative but brilliantly groovy pop album

Monday 21 November 2016

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Email WhatsApp

Advertising

Pharrell Williams isn't in his forties. No mister, he's in his phwoar-ties. Few men reach their fifth decade oozing such boyish sex appeal. Fewer still hit a career peak at that age. After defining the 2000s as a star player of production team The Neptunes, he raised the bar with his spot on 'Get Lucky'. His freakishly youthful manchild face is now squarely in the spotlight, but here's the thing: he is getting older and this solo album proves it.

The most obvious sign of maturity is the broad theme of celebrating women. Some may say it's a cynical reaction to 'Blurred Lines', his blokesploitation hit, written with Robin Thicke. Others may worry that by constantly addressing women as 'girl', he misses the point entirely.

Both are debatable, but songs like 'Brand New' definitely recall the sweet earnestness of Stevie Wonder at his most effusive ('You came along, and made me strong... I just wanna say thank you'). Just ignore the mind-blowing moment on 'Lost Queen' when he somehow rhymes 'multi-tasking' with 'passion'.

Another sure sign of ageing is the sound. Years ago, Pharrell's love of technoid sci-fi beamed into his songs (he called his label Star Trak after all). The sonics here are still club-ready but far tamer: a solid block of Michael Jackson disco, Hollywood strings and snappy funk-rock riffing. The strongest comparison is his work on 2002's 'Justified' by Justin Timberlake (a guest on the album, along with Daft Punk, Alicia Keys, and erm, Miley Cyrus).

But my word, what shines is Williams's ability to put a bowtie on pop through arrangements that grab your imagination and bore into your cerebellum. Grooves are both melancholic and head-nodding on 'It Girl', basslines come alive on 'I Know Who You Are'. There's even a strange interlude where a song emerges that turns into a baroque ode to penetration. And that's before you factor in 'Happy'.

The best you can say is that Pharrell has created, hands down, one of the biggest and best pop albums of the year. The worst is that, well, it sometimes sounds a bit Magic FM. Oddly age-appropriate, in fact, for one so young looking.

Been there, done that? Think again, my friend.

By entering your email address you agree to our Terms of Use and Privacy Policy and consent to receive emails from Time Out about news, events, offers and partner promotions.

🙌
Awesome, you're subscribed!

Thanks for subscribing! Look out for your first newsletter in your inbox soon!

More album reviews

Beyoncé – ‘Lemonade’ album review

Music
Pop

★★★★★ Beyoncé worked with so many people on ‘Lemonade’, her sixth album which she dropped in late April with an accompanying short fi lm, that its credits run to 3,105 words. It’s a testament to her star power that none of her collaborators blabbed before the surprise album release – Bey’s second in a row after her 2013 self-titled LP. But it’s also a testament to her star quality that despite the many, many cooks in this kitchen, ‘Lemonade’ feels like an album only Beyoncé could make. ‘Lemonade’ is officially billed as ‘a conceptual project based on every woman’s journey of self knowledge and healing’, but the narrative is really one of marital infi delity. ‘How did it come down to this? Going through your call list,’ she sings on the deceptively breezy reggae bounce of ‘Hold Up’, before issuing what sounds like an ultimatum on the brilliant, Jack White-assisted rock stomper ‘Don’t Hurt Yourself’: ‘If you try this shit again / You gon’ lose your wife.’ The electro blips of ‘Sorry’ feature another killer couplet: ‘He only want me when I’m not there / He better call Becky with the good hair.’ Beyoncé stops short of singing ‘My sister Solange appeared to attack you in a lift after the Met Gala in 2014’, but this is still startling stuff which must be tough for Jay Z (who appears in the short film) to listen to. As the story progresses from rage to reconciliation, ‘Lemonade’ continues to thrill musically. Bey teams with The Weeknd for ‘6 Inch’, a kind of strip club update of

PJ Harvey – ‘The Hope Six Demolition Project’ album review

Music

★★★★☆ Last winter, PJ Harvey sealed herself behind one-way glass in a room beneath Somerset House, along with her band and producer Flood. Visitors to ‘Recording in Progress’, which was billed as an art installation rather than a music event, could see and hear the two-time Mercury-winner making her ninth album. The result is ‘The Hope Six Demolition Project’, which deals with bearing witness in another sense too. Over four years, Harvey and photojournalist Seamus Murphy spent time in Kosovo, Afghanistan and poor areas of Washington DC, notebook and camera in hand. What they saw furnished a volume of poetry and images, footage for music videos and a documentary, and finally these 11, frequently thrilling but more often deeply uneasy, songs. As album genesis stories go, it’s the opposite of Happy Mondays spunking the sessions for ‘Yes Please!’ in Barbados. Full points for earnestness. But the ‘writer as camera’ approach puts Harvey on dangerous ground. Her 2011 album ‘Let England Shake’ charged through centuries of war in a characteristically full-blooded act of imagination. Here she observes the current aftermath of geopolitical fuck-ups in diligently literal detail. ‘A white jawbone, syringes, razors, a plastic spoon, human hair, a kitchen knife, and the ghost of a girl who runs and hides,’ she lists on ‘The Ministry of Defence’. Harvey’s voice is extraordinary, soaring like a surface-to-air missile. But it’s telling that her muse sometimes feels a little too tethered to

Advertising

All Saints – ‘Red Flag’ album review

Music

★★★★☆ Once upon a time All Saints were The Spice Girls for cool people. Named after All Saints Road in Notting Hill, this combat trouser-wearing combo drew from UK garage, electronica and R&B. They smirked, sulked and swished instead of faking showbiz grins. They took a song called ‘Bootie Call’ to Number One years before Drake coined the term ‘hotline bling’. So although their 2006 comeback album ‘Studio 1’ fl opped horribly, Melanie, Shaznay, Natalie and Nicole still deserve the benefit of the doubt. Current single ‘One Strike’ is a sleekly catchy reintroduction and fortunately it’s no one-off. The dramatic ‘This Is a War’ shows off their seamless vocal harmonies, ‘Summer Rain’ is a snakelike slice of balmy R&B and ‘One Woman Man’ wraps a plea for monogamy in glorious sweeping strings. The album’s closing stretch even features some more expansive tracks that lay lovely airy melodies over surprising tribal beats. Given that All Saints originally split in 2001 after arguing about who would wear a certain jacket for a photoshoot, it’s sweet to hear the title track’s nod to female friendship: ‘Why didn’t I stop and listen? Why didn’t I hear my girls?’ But ‘Red Flag’ succeeds above all because it feels grown-up without being boring. The catty dancehall smackdown of ‘Ratchet Behaviour’ is a welcome reminder that these four women should not be messed with. (Spice Girls’ Mel B recently claimed she had a bathroom scrap with Shaznay back in the ’90s: we’d have paid good money to s

Zayn – ‘Mind of Mine’ album review

Music

★★★☆☆ After quitting the world’s biggest boy band in March 2015, Zayn Malik shared his true thoughts on the group’s music a few months later. ‘Would you listen to One Direction, sat at a party with your girl? I wouldn’t,’ he told The Fader. Though a little ungracious, the diss doesn’t seem to have discouraged his fans: last month, Zayn’s debut solo single ‘Pillowtalk’ reached Number One in both the UK and US. This album continues his move from 1D’s precision-tooled pop-rock into hipper, more intimate musical territory. The crisp choruses of ‘Pillowtalk’ and follow-up single ‘Like I Would’ are slightly misleading, because elsewhere ‘Mind of Mine’ clearly wants to be a moody alternative R&B album. The gentle electronic quiver of ‘She Don't Love Me’ and ‘Bright’ recall The Weeknd, while atmospheric downtempo jams like ‘It’s You’ and ‘Borderz’ have strong echoes of Frank Ocean. Sure, it’s a bit derivative, but Zayn’s distinctive voice – a smokey smoulder with a strong falsetto – will keep you intrigued. In a few years time, Zayn will probably look back and cringe at the way he’s stylised each track title with alternating capital letters: ‘dRuNk’, ‘rEaR vIeW’ and ‘lUcOzAdE’ – which seems to be a song about people who’ve wronged Zayn, and thankfully not an ode to the isotonic sports drink. But then again, his lingering gaucheness can be endearing. When he yelps ‘We'll piss off the neighbours’ on ‘Pillowtalk’, it’s a very British and strangely passive way of announcing that he’s

Advertising

Adele – ‘25’ album review

Music
Pop

★★☆☆☆ In February 2012, at the height of her post-’21’ pomp, Adele Adkins told a reporter: ‘I can’t write another break-up record. That would be a real cliché. It would just be a boring running theme. I think people will be like: “I think I’ve had enough now, cheer up”.’ She kinda nailed it.The fastest way to explain ‘25’ – one of the most tremendously fêted albums ever – is to say that there’s nothing on it as scorching and pulse-racing as ‘Rolling in the Deep’, and there’s nothing so overwhelmingly moving as ‘Someone Like You’. That in itself doesn’t make it a bad album – but it’s what 99 percent of people will think after that all-important first listen. It’s no ‘21’. After the insane success of that breakthrough second album, Adele could have had it all. She could have travelled the world, broadened her horizons, learned new tricks. Reinvention was within her grasp. The fact that Adele has eschewed reinvention this time around, and instead tried to make a whole album of ‘Someone Like You’s, is a shame. But the fact that ‘25’ is as innovative as a flip phone isn’t a reason to criticise it. So here’s one: It’s a bit dull. Now, that’s not to say it’s not worth a listen. Wailers and wallowers in particular should rest assured – ‘25’ is still a festival of sadness, a ruptured tear duct gushing out woe like an unmanned fire hose. If you only hear one piano ballad this year, make it ‘All I Ask’ – written with Bruno Mars yet pleasantly reminiscent of the great Whitney Housto

Kwabs – ‘Love + War’ album review

Music
Rap, hip hop and R&B

★★★★☆ First things first, it’s pronounced ‘k-wor-bs’, so relax: you can stop scratching around inside your underpants. But if you’re a fan of soulful grooves, crackling synths or generally good music, you probably knew that already. This 25-year old Londoner has been making waves for a couple of years now, and it’s not difficult to hear why. Kwabs can sing. I mean, really, really, sounds-a-bitlike-Luther-Vandross sing – and he makes sure you know it with a bunch of excellent pop bangers and the odd pulsating ballad on this debut LP. Head straight to delicate piano weepie ‘Perfect Ruin’ as an example of the latter. There are one or two worrying moments, where things threaten to go a bit Mick Hucknall, but, frankly, Kwabs could be backed by the Teletubbies and this album would still be an impressive debut.

Advertising

Ought – ‘Sun Coming Down’ album review

Music
Rock and indie

★★★★☆ Montreal’s Ought are the closet their city’s iconic Constellation Records has come to signing a ‘normal’ guitar band – but they share their label’s extravagant bloody-mindedness. Wildly-praised 2013 debut ‘Today More than Any Other Day’ and last year’s excellent ‘Once More with Feeling’ EP weren’t exactly easy listening, but Ought’s heavy, snarling take on post-punk contained moments of explosive exhilaration, and even the odd ballad. ‘Sun Coming Down’ offers no such olive branch: opener ‘Men for Miles’ sounds like Mark E Smith being bludgeoned to death with several very heavy guitars and there’s not much respite over the record’s eight sludgy songs. But give it time and patience and beauty emerges from the chaos. Shimmeringly heavy centrepiece ‘Beautiful Blue Sky’ is a remarkable piece of music, like some sublime union of Talking Heads and Shellac, while Tim Beeler’s ferociously growled lyrics are endlessly fascinating. ‘This is the high watermark of civilization’ he snarls on ‘Never Better’, and I’m not going to be the one who argues with him.

Lana Del Rey – ‘Honeymoon’ album review

Music
Pop

★★★★☆ ‘I’ve got nothing much to live for ever since I found my fame,’ Lana Del Rey sings on ‘God Knows I Tried’, a typically wistful song from her impressive new album. If anything, the enigmatic singer born Elizabeth Woolridge Grant has only become more elusive since 2011’s ‘Video Games’ made her a sensation, though her work rate remains enviable. ‘Honeymoon’ is her fourth collection of new material – three albums and an EP – in as many years. Though it’s glossier than last year’s grungy ‘Ultraviolence’, this album is no more commercially-minded. With Del Rey co-producing throughout, ‘Honeymoon’ unfolds languidly over 65 minutes in a familiar swirl of cinematic strings, twangy guitars and exquisitely miserable melodies. A handful of tracks feature trap-inspired beats and there's a dash of jazz on ‘Art Deco’ and ‘Terrence Loves You’ Del Rey always refines her formula cautiously. When she ruins her cover of Nina Simone’s ‘Don’t Let Me Be Misunderstood’ with some cheesy horror film organ riffs, it’s a rare lapse in taste that makes you appreciate her usual flair for crafting elegantly melancholy dream-pop. The singer’s submissive doomed romantic persona remains troublesome, especially when she swoons over a man with a ‘history of violence’ on the title track, but ‘Honeymoon’ also contains welcome hints of something spunkier. ‘You could be a bad motherfucker, but that don’t make you a man,’ she tells a disappointing lover on ‘High By the Beach’, while ‘Salvatore’ finds her de

Advertising

Battles – ‘La Di Da Di’ album review

Music
Rock and indie

★★★☆☆ They may hate the tag, but avant-riffing three-piece Battles will forever be classed as ‘math rock’. Sounds geeky and boring, right? Geeky: absolutely. Boring: not a chance, as third album ‘La Di Da Di’ wholeheartedly proves. Like your maths homework, you’ll need to give it your full attention. It’s not background music for a party, unless your parties involve sitting around a MacBook reading Pitchfork. You can’t really dance to ‘La Di Da Di’, sing or hum along with it, or even mosh to it, but listen – like, actually listen – to the numerous angular guitar walkabouts scattered throughout every track, the glitchy synth interruptions in ‘Dot Net’ and the card-counting rhythms of ‘FF Bada’, and you’ll uncover a weirdly funky and hugely satisfying tapestry of musicianship.

Mac DeMarco – ‘Another One’ album review

Music
Rock and indie

You might think of Mac DeMarco as a wacky dude, always with the beer and the jokes. But on his fourth record he’s totally bummed out.