It's hard not to listen to System, the fifth studio album by Seal, without hearing his wife, Heidi Klum's Project Runway cohorts fawning over it. Stunning! says Tim. Editorial and aesthetically pleasing, says Nina. And poor Michael Kors, completely at a loss for a bitchily vivid simile, is reduced to praising its gorgeous details and exquisite construction. Of course, like all of Seal's records, System really is all of those things... and little to nothing more, offering us a fleeting, stunning, editorial and aesthetically pleasing, gorgeously detailed and exquisitely constructed glimpse into the immediate future of high end car commercials.
The music of System is so silvery and slick, so fashion forward, so runway ready, coldly confident and alluringly unapproachable - and so ultimately temporary - that it challenges its very classification as music. Like Usher in those Macy's commercials, Seal's not peddling songs so much as a lifestyle accessory here - a designer fragrance for the ears. We don't purchase a Seal record in the earnest hopes of falling in love with its melodies, but rather to flatter our own sense of taste and style. Not only do we feel more attractive when we put on System, but in a sense, there is really no other purpose for a Seal record than to make us more attractive to the people we want to attract. Seal's music carries with it a potent aural musk of intelligence, success, wealth both financial and spiritual, and effortless urbanity and charisma, reflected not just in the sonic splendor of his records, but also in lyrics where verbs like "wish" and "fly" clink drinks with adjectives like "amazing" and "real" in intriguingly convoluted and vaguely inspirational combinations.
Seal's Fall 2007 collection is characterized by an emphasis on up tempos and club beats, swirling electronics reminiscent of Madonna's William Orbit period coupled with Seal's typically soaring choruses - if all the world could see us now, he sings over whooshing synthesizers in the (almost) closer "Immaculate" - and occasionally contrasted with aggressively gritty folk-rock guitar, most notably on the strangely affecting "Dumb". Get a load of those arpeggiated textures! That oceanic bass throb! Those cresting waves of vocodered harmonies! Those shamelessly artificial robot string sections! It all sounds fantastic. In fact, it sounds so fantastic that money spent on this record is almost completely justified by the fantastic-ness of its sound, even when the substance (see "Wedding Day", his duet with her Klum-ness, who sings like an android sent from heaven) gets a little fruity.
Songs like the opener "If It's In My Mind, It's On My Face" sound suspiciously like the work of a messianically-inclined motivational speaker with an incorrigible penchant for dry ice and neon - and frankly, Seal seems far too superhuman to truly empathize with the anonymous Monday to Friday grind - but it's hard not to fall in line with his insistent grooviness while commuting through your real life anonymous Monday to Friday grind. Seal relies far too heavily on a somewhat troublesome impulse to save his audience from their assumed ordinariness. But then again, Seal's formidable physical hotness and his undeniable ability to make exceedingly gorgeous-sounding records are what's kept him in business for nearly 20 years: his music never fails to add a hint of larger-than-life glamor and significance to a rush hour traffic jam. To say nothing of what it might do for a Lexus ad.
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BECAUSE YOU NEED TO KNOW:
"System" by Seal
Warner Bros. Records
Released 11/13/07
Produced by Stuart Price
47 min.
SONGS: If It's In My Mind, It's On My Face - Amazing [Thin White Duke Edit] - Just Like Before - Loaded - Wedding Day - Dumb - The Right Life - Rolling - Immaculate - Amazing
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