Indie Pop Descontrol

Okay, I like indie pop; not as much as I like the mainstream, but I like it. So, indie music got hyped and mainstreamed here in Brasil; I blame MTV of course, but since I sometimes tend to look after the underdogs, I'm kinda ignoring the whole indie rock scene and hooking up to the pop side of indie, the one that tends to be overlooked.

Today I got this urge to revisit an artist that had a big hit in 2002 but after some quite successful singles she fell into media ostracism: Vanessa Carlton. Everyone knows that A Thousand Miles song and the cute road movie-ish video. But few people know how genius and beautiful are her two albums. I name them The Winter Album [Be Not Nobody - 2002] and The Summer Album [Harmonium - 2004]. Her debut has a pretty shiny art work but an attentive listen to it you realize there's nothing shiny about it. Lyrics like Rinse's and Sway's or even A Thousand Miles itself are full with heartbreak and sorrow; even the sweet ballad Pretty Baby or the wonderful Ordinary Day are somehow pinched by sadness and a reclusive behavior similar to winter [my favorite season, I must say], when animals go hibernating. The orchestra, arranged and conducted by the pop mogul Ron Fair [who produced hypes like Aguilera, Ashlee Simpson and The Black Eyed Peas], is present all over the album in a piercing and heartbreaking fashion, transmiting with perfection the deep tone from the songs.
Her sophomore is no less than deep either. However in a reprised paradox that I much love about her two works, Harmonium that has a rather dark art has more hopeful and shinier songs. Already on the first single, the lead track White Houses, we can already see Carlton went more lightful. The song, about being adolescent and breaking out on the world making the mistakes required for growing up but never regreting them, has an apparently clumsy piano that along the song gets bigger and more mature. Noted the song inner metaphor? Later we have a collection of songs that sounds perfect for being played on summer vacations, while you are with your friends at this beautiful kind of decadent summer house, having fun and first experiences. Who's To Say has a wonderful look at overcoming love, Afterglow talks about regret free souls and Private Radio is pure fun.

Then there's Nelly Furtado. You may ask what's indie about her, but that is because you probably only know her current reinvention. But before her turn into a [as stupid haters say] pop whore she was a restless and eager girl wearing baggy jeans and big bright smiles. But I'll talk about her unfairly underrated sophomore album. I confess it's my least favorite of hers, but it's no less genius like everything she does.

Furtado in Folklore goes darker. I think the album fails in taking itself too seriously, but I can't help praising the beautiful mix of cultures she and producers Track & Field do in it. Here there's no hip hop abundance like in her debut; instead there's an interesting and [this word again] overlooked collage of Portuguese folkloric elements and pop music. The Kronos Quartet featured One-Trick Pony is a beautiful set-the-mood intro that leads to the empowering and sassy Powerless (Say What You Want). The album later presents other interesting fusions like the Samba rap in Explode, the cheery fado in the masterpiece Força, the Blues-y Picture Perfect that is about imigrant life, the main subject of the album, also present in other delicious tracks like Try, Fresh Off The Boat and the Tonada De La Luna Llena sampled and Caetano Veloso featured Island Of Wonder.

Maybe this mix of not so largely known cultural references were the reason of Folklore's flop; Furtado seemed to be obviously doing an album for her own pleasure, not thinking at all on general public's reaction and charts. I absolutely have nothing against that but that's not exactly what pop labels really look for. But in the end, the nostalgia is so well constructed in the album that you find yourself missing a bunch of things, even if you can't exactly define what they are [saudade again folks].

My third piece of indie pop from today is actually very hyped right now. Everyone loves Mika [excpet the ho of course]. There's nothing much to be said about this guy; the Life In Cartoon Motion album is sheer fun, a cute pastiche of Elton John and the Scissors Sisters filled with sassy lyrics and tunes. I absolutely love the Love Today and Lollipop songs, but it's [surely] the sorrowful Happy Ending [click to download] that's been on my mind lately. I wonder why.

[Song: Annie - Vanessa Carlton]