plorentz's Full Review: Little Voice by Sara Bareilles
Maybe it's just me, but isn't the sudden, seeming approachability of today's pop stars via social networking sites like MySpace and Facebook just a little depressing? When I was growing up, pop stars were distant, exotic things - not people so much as mythical beings who hailed from mythical places like, y'know, Australia. You could always, of course, buy a copy of Smash Hits and gaze at new photos of the pop star, or maybe learn what their favorite color was, or peruse the lyrics of their latest single, but no matter how long you stared, how much you learned, or how extensively you perused, the pop star would retain their essential, ineffable mystery. Sometimes their records had addresses you could write to, to join a fan club, or maybe learn about a certain cause or charity close to the pop star's heart. Or sometimes you could write to the artists themselves, but you had to do it with a sort of religious faith, because their was little chance that you'd get a concrete written reply from the pop star in return. Because - and this was understood - you were a person, and they were a pop star, and as such, the two of you occupied completely different existential planes.
Not so with today's pop stars. Where we used to have to wait for some radio programmer or MTV to tell us who the next big star was going to be, today the process of pop star ascendance is far more democratic and chaotic. We add them as friends. And we can read their blogs, and see their pictures, and hear their songs, all as if we actually knew them. If they really wanted to, they could see pictures of our dogs. (Hi Oscar. Hi Spike. Hi Fritz.) And we can see theirs too. It's incredible. And terribly de-mystifying. And it's given rise to what may be a whole new cross-genre sub-genre of music made up completely of these demystified pop stars who are also friends: MySpace pop (a term I'm certain I didn't invent). Colbie Caillat. Esmee Denters. sighSara Bareilles, who has had the added advantage of not only having her debut single "Love Song" featured in a recent TV ad, but also made a personal appearance right in that ad (playing her piano in some guy's house, before he switched the channel to some rap song). Within minutes of the ad hitting the airwaves, "Love Song" and Sara Bareilles had gone Top 10 where she keeps company with the Ushers and Mariahs of the world. And we're totally friends.
Singer-songwriter-piano-player Sara Bareilles grew up in Eureka, California. Her hobbies growing up were writing songs and playing in the redwood forests around her home. She likes Elton John and Counting Crows, but doesn't mind it at all when people compare her music to Norah Jones - she likes Norah's "subtlety" - or Fiona Apple, whose lyrical fierceness she covets. She thinks Canada is totally cool. She also swears a lot when she's talking to you, but just a little bit when she's singing. Her favorite cuss, by my estimation, is sh*t. She's supercool and fun to hang out with. Not that I ever have actually hung out with her, but it's like, so apparent. And her first album, which she worked really hard on for a year - one of the most tumultuous years of her life, she'll tell you - the experience of which she's totally thankful for because it's made her, like, a much stronger artist, came out last year and it's called Little Voice.
And I think I could really love Sara Bareilles. I just wish I didn't know her so well. Because the thing about Sara Bareilles is that - quite contrary to the sweet-little-california-girly-girl-with-a-potty-mouth-and-no-capital-letters image she projects in her blog - on record, she comes on with uncommon maturity and sophistication and confidence. (She don't need no assertiveness training, thank you very much!) Her voice is powerful and decisive, especially as she cuts through the chorus of a song like "Love Song", where she's clearly made up her mind - I'm not gonna write you a love song! - drawn her line in the proverbial sand, dug in her heels, and put up her dukes in way that is the opposite of cute or sweet or approachable.
Coupled with her soulful, piano-pounding syncopations, the song is an exercise in firm, cool-headed, and finally dismissive feminine power. There are no ecstatic runs. There are no weak-in-the-knees gasps or hiccups, no hysterical belting. And there is positively no Alanis snarl, whatsoever. When she tells the guy "you mean well, but you make it hard on me", she's not really giving away any kind of vulnerability, but rather almost sympathizing for the guy's pathetic cluelessness as she winds up for her smackdown. Not that she can't be pretty; she takes special care to demonstrate her unflappable sense of style by ever so coolly adding a falsetto accent here and there to underline a point. But to argue with this voice would be self-evidently futile, because she's pre-emptively destroyed your case, and she didn't have to break a sweat doing it.
Comparisons to Norah and Fiona are a little nearsighted and misplaced - she's generally louder than the former and far more well adjusted than the latter - but not entirely unfounded. "Bottle It Up" does open up with a broodingly spare, leaden beat, and a gravelly far-left-side-of-the-piano-keyboard rumble which will give anyone flashbacks to Fiona Apple's "Criminal"; and if Bareilles shares neither Norah's understated jazz club swing nor her smoke-and-wallpapery aural presence, she, at the very least, seems poised to share Norah's audience. Crucially, Sara Bareilles really sounds like a lot of different people we're all familiar with - she steals piano riffs from Elton John (see the wah-wah happy 70s retro-romp "Love on the Rocks", which somewhat disappointingly is not a Neil Diamond cover) and artificially gospel-sweetened neo-soul grooves from Macy Gray ("Many the Miles"). She conveys the alternately sunny and sultry pop appeal of Sheryl Crow on songs like "One Sweet Love" and "Vegas", while indulging a flare for the epic balladry of Annie Lennox on the closing "Gravity".
With all of these obvious points of reference in play, Bareilles certainly runs the risk of coming across as a faceless musical cipher, but for the most part, she succeeds in coming across as her own artist. Significantly, she wrote all her own songs, and worked with a single, able producer - Eric Rosse, whose resume includes work for Tori Amos and Anna Nalick, and who gives this album a slick, accessible-but-not-indistinguishable sound. And happily, the record is utterly devoid of any kind of flashy guest appearances. (Deal with that, Sean Kingston.) Nevertheless, Little Voice is a hard record to get all that excited about. There's nothing at all exotic or dangerous or even weirdly intriguing about Sara Bareilles. Is it possible that she's just a little too... friendly? Maybe. But that doesn't stop Little Voice from being one of the most consistent, and consistently worthwhile, mainstream pop records to come out in the last couple years.
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BECAUSE YOU NEED TO KNOW:
"Little Voice" by Sara Bareilles
Epic Records
Released 7/17/07
Produced by Eric Ivan Rosse
49 min.
SONGS: Love Song - Vegas - Bottle It Up - One Sweet Love - Come Round Soon - Morningside - Between the Lines - Love on the Rocks - City - Many the Miles - Fairytale - Gravity
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