ARTIST: Lily Allen
TITLE: It’s Not Me, It’s You
WEB DEBUT: Feb. 2, 2009
RELEASE DATE: Feb. 10, 2009
ONE-LISTEN VERDICT: Lily Allen’s second album is a bit more reserved and a bit more grouchy than its predecessor, with the reggae samples giving way to brittle synths (until the final track, which swaps in a scratchy parlor-music 78) and more than a few songs that take on former lovers, former U.S. leaders, and the still-entrenched celebrity media. A few months back, a commenter drew a parallel between Allen and Pulp’s Jarvis Cocker thanks to both artists penning songs titled “The Fear,” and while I think the analogy is still imperfect, the growing world-weariness Allen shows on You with culture as a whole shows that she’s at least operating in a similar framework. (Let’s revisit it in another eight or 10 years.) Allen’s voice is in top form, with its whispery, conversational style serving her musings on fame and romance to a T.
THE BEST TRACK: Of the brand-new songs on the album, “Chinese,” a wistful love song with sparkling guitars and a longing for domesticity, is a standout. But I still love “Everyone’s At It,” a wonderfully irritable take on the pop-cultureplex that sounds like it should double as a theme for some BBC sci-fi show about a dreary, tabloid-saturated future.
On my fourth go round, and this album is a phenom.
I genuinely disliked the first album so I’m a bit surprised at how much I like this one.
This is really great. Easily better than Alright, Still.
“Everyone’s At It,” a wonderfully irritable take on the pop-cultureplex that sounds like it should double as a theme for some BBC sci-fi show about a dreary, tabloid-saturated future.
I thought there already was a BBC Sci-Fi show with exactly this kind of theme:
I want to lie shipwrecked and comatose
Drinking fresh mango juice
Goldfish shoals nibbling at my toes
Fun, fun, fun in the sun, sun, sun
[stason.org]
[/anglophile-nerd]
The production is brilliant, and the album is cohesive in a way that Alright, Still wasn’t. It’s easily some of the best stuff Greg Kurstin has ever done, and a huge leap for Lily, too. It’s great.