Lily Allen Is Back At It

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.