CD: Ke$ha - Warrior

Ke$ha’s presentation is very shrewd. When she first appeared a couple of years ago, she seemed to be trashy, binge-drinking progeny of the Lady Gaga phenomenon. As time passed, the 25-year-old Californian singer tempered this version of herself with a musical self-awareness contrary to tabloid reports of global boozing and bum-flashing.

Notably, she worked with Wayne Coyne of space-pop alt-rockers The Flaming Lips, contributing a track to, and appearing on the cover of, The Flaming Lips and Heady Fwends. More recently she’s been telling anyone who’d listen that her second album, Warrior, is heavily indebted to Seventies rock, that she’s been listening to lots of Led Zep, Iggy Pop and T-Rex. It all sounded rather promising…

Unfortunately, the above is just branding. Sure, she’s a feisty one, but primarily Ke$ha is a calculated package from the stable of New York producer-svengali Lukasz "Dr Luke" Gottwald, the chap also behind Katy Perry’s rise to fame. Thus, while Iggy Pop makes a perfunctory cameo on “Dirty Love”, a song that sounds like an 80% neutered Joan Jett, and there are occasional bursts of stomping glam rock drums, Warrior is essentially run-of-the-mill Euro-techno-disco, Saturday night suburban sports bar stuff. That said, Ke$ha’s carpe diem attitude, strident voice and bullish lyrics are refreshing compared to the wishy-washy platitudes of her peers. She wants to “shoot the lights out like a machine gun” and “thinks it’s time for our revolution” while continually recommending we stay up all night, party as hard as possible and have lots of sex. Can’t argue with that in this age of subtly puritanical recession. She also has a tasty sneer on her, which comes to the fore on the enjoyable “Crazy Kids”, a throbbing bass groove over which she raps like a snarling Nicki Minaj. Ke$ha does seem a cut above. There’s something going on. It will be great when she breaks out of her current musical straitjacket and really lets rip.

Watch the video for 'Die Young'