Singles and Downloads 2 | reviews, news & interviews
Singles and Downloads 2
Singles and Downloads 2
This month's bumper crop, from Rihanna to the Astral Social Club
Tuesday, 01 December 2009
Rihanna's Russian Roulette: an incredibly harrowing but addictive listen
Rihanna, Russian Roulette (Mercury)
I strongly suggest anyone who believes the sound of US mainstream pop is somehow homogenised and safe take another look at the current charts. Standing over them like android colossi are Lady Gaga and Rihanna - who not only look exactly as pop stars were always going to look "in the future", but sound apocalyptically insane. This song is in the standard melodramatic modern power-ballad style of writer/producer Ne-Yo, but the combination of Rihanna's piercing voice and the lyrics that circle in the non-specific manner of nightmares around death, obsession, loyalty and points of no return - with (no shit, Sherlock) a heavy whiff of sado-masochism - make it an incredibly harrowing but addictive listen. The flip side to "Umbrella"'s promise of protection, it's scary pop music for scary times. "Russian Roulette" on Amazon. "Umbrella" on Amazon. (JM)
Rihanna, Russian Roulette (Mercury)
I strongly suggest anyone who believes the sound of US mainstream pop is somehow homogenised and safe take another look at the current charts. Standing over them like android colossi are Lady Gaga and Rihanna - who not only look exactly as pop stars were always going to look "in the future", but sound apocalyptically insane. This song is in the standard melodramatic modern power-ballad style of writer/producer Ne-Yo, but the combination of Rihanna's piercing voice and the lyrics that circle in the non-specific manner of nightmares around death, obsession, loyalty and points of no return - with (no shit, Sherlock) a heavy whiff of sado-masochism - make it an incredibly harrowing but addictive listen. The flip side to "Umbrella"'s promise of protection, it's scary pop music for scary times. "Russian Roulette" on Amazon. "Umbrella" on Amazon. (JM)
Add comment
Subscribe to theartsdesk.com
Thank you for continuing to read our work on theartsdesk.com. For unlimited access to every article in its entirety, including our archive of more than 15,000 pieces, we're asking for £5 per month or £40 per year. We feel it's a very good deal, and hope you do too.
To take a subscription now simply click here.
And if you're looking for that extra gift for a friend or family member, why not treat them to a theartsdesk.com gift subscription?
more New music
Conchúr White, St Pancras Old Church review - side-stepping the past to embrace the future
Northern Irish troubadour pushes forward
Pop Will Eat Itself, Chalk, Brighton review - hip hop rockers deliver a whopper
Eighties/Nineties indie-tronic dance mavericks take the roof off
Album: Beth Gibbons - Lives Outgrown
Intimate songs of unavoidable sorrow
Music Reissues Weekly: Little Girls - Valley Songs
Deserved tribute to the Los Angeles new wave popsters who failed to click
Album: Ani DiFranco - Unprecedented Sh!t
Tough, uncompromising, unflinching
Album: Abigail Lapell - Anniversary
An engaging - if doleful - set from the Canadian folk-Americana singer
Album: Kings Of Leon - Can We Please Have Fun
The good ole boys of stadium indie go back to basics: will it work?
Album: Bab L'Bluz - Swaken
Fiery psychedelia to lift your soul coming straight out of the Maghreb
Album: Pokey LaFarge - Rhumba Country
A pig in a pokey, as the singer farms in Maine and reads the Bible, with technicolor results
Album: Josienne Clarke - Parenthesis, I
Redefining the self, from the most absorbing of British singer-songwriters
Music Reissues Weekly: West Coast Consortium - All The Love In The World
Top-drawer British harmony pop band whose promise was unfulfilled
CVC, Concorde 2, Brighton review - they have the songs and they have the presence
Welsh sextet bring their lively Seventies-flavoured pop frollicking to the south coast
Comments
...
...