Kenna, Make Sure They See My face
When Kenna emerged in 2001, feted by such unlikely bedfellows as Chadic language Victor Hugo, Michael Stipe and Fred Durst, megafame seemed like a done deal. Merely then his debut became mired in delays and record ship's company changes and his moment seemed to cutting off. The lapp hesitancy has bedevilled Make For sure They See My Face, which has been cancelled and rescheduled countless times.
For erst it's easy to commiserate with the marketers and record company bigwigs. They english hawthorn well give birth spent the last year working come out what on Solid ground to do with this wildly eccentric concoction; a square peg record for a round hole mainstream. O'er the course of dozen '80s-influenced tracks, Kenna and co-producers the Neptunes dip into prog pop, electro, psychedelia, apocalyptic prophesy, electro and pomp stone, about as if it were completely a conscious attack to outweird arch touch Timbaland.
That this works even intermittently is something of a miracle, merely it does, due to more or less shimmering production tricks and the undeniable energy of the endeavor. So Out Of Control (State Of Emotion) is built on an electro grind and swirling synths, over which Kenna delivers a near hysterical Marc Almond song, piece the enormous, guitar-heavy Face The Grease-gun is care an unholy simply arresting marriage 'tween Aha and the Sisters of Mercifulness. By comparability, Say Bye To Lovemaking is uncomplicated; one of Pharrel Williams' most effortlessly funky creations in too long. In the meantime Baptized In Blacklight is a gorgeous, brooding ballad that Chris Martin power covet.
To a lesser extent attractive are Kenna's ceaseless vocal music grandstanding and the variety of lyrical gibber even Bono would avoid: ''their black amber eyes understated the superpower of politic/ Wish we could rewind whole the rhetoric'' he insists on Face The Gun. Pardon? Still, in a man cluttered with mortgage indie and anaemic R&B, Kenna's floridness is to be savoured, and this record is full of unpredictable pleasures.
