Kala scattered but mature
Published Aug. 24, 2007
In Rolling Stone critic Robert Christgau's review of Kala, M.I.A.'s second album, he likens the album to Kanye West's sophomore effort, Late Registration. Both albums are an "unexpectedly sure-footed follow-up to a brainy beat-adept's can-you-top-this debut," he said. And that's true. Also true is Christgau's assertion that "both albums challenge sophomore slump by risking pretension."
But in both those senses, and others, Kala, even more than Late Registration, resembles Arcade Fire's recent Neon Bible.
Like Arcade Fire's debut, Funeral, M.I.A.'s first album, Arular, was a focused, honed, star-making record. Both albums acted as therapy for their creator(s) and were zeitgeists for many magnetized fans during the middle part of this decade.
On its follow-up, Arcade Fire took its shambolic, pulsating indie and its inward-looking, hyper-personal lyrics and expanded them outward, making an album full of stadium-ready songs with obvious political overtones. Likewise, on Kala, M.I.A. succeeds in expanding and maturing her sound without losing focus or sacrificing her ethos.
After visa troubles, M.I.A. ditched sessions with Timbaland to make her worldly beats around the world. She and producer Switch recorded various parts of the album (and each song) in Trinidad, Jamaica, India, Australia and Baltimore. This makes sense: M.I.A. is the one major pop star speaking for the people in the world's shanties and alleys without condescension. Why not record there, too?
But this doesn't mean M.I.A. has abandoned her shifty, stuttering, aggressive beats. If anything, they sound more real, more (and aptly) chaotic and more urgent. "Bird Flu," one of the first Kala songs to leak, sounds like a microphone was dropped into the middle of a parade in Bali. It's stuttering, rattling drums and sampled chicken squawks (no animals were harmed in the making of this internet sensation) is an Arular beat on steroids.
Single "Boyz" is M.I.A.'s most obvious crossover grab; its bouncy dancehall keys wouldn't have sounded out of place on a pre-2007 Rihanna single. "XR2," with its skittering synths and boisterous horn sample, make it Kala's "Bucky Done Gun," but M.I.A.'s druggy cadence keep it from reaching that song's heights.
Although those three songs fall somewhere between rowdy and batshit insane, none are really a departure for her. The songs that are, though, turn out to be Kala's highlights. The swooning Bollywood cover "Jimmy" and its cascading disco strings is M.I.A.'s most theatrical song, and the chorus on the woozy, snap-influenced "Paper Planes" uses gunshots and cash-register rings to make its point.
But it's the Pixies and New Order-nicking "20 Dollar" that is Kala's showstopper. A chopped, staggering synth line is intertwined with M.I.A.'s screwed wails to make a swampy, sweltering beat that would be the perfect soundtrack to a slow-motion Vietnam War montage.
Although Kala is an undeniably impressive and fascinating album, its ultimate flaw is its unevenness. Both "Hussel" and "Down River" take Kala's "to-the-people" aesthetic a bit too far. The former's rap from an African native and the latter's from Aboriginal teens are authentic but not very good. The novelty appeal of "Boyz" diminishes after every subsequent chorus, and the Timbaland bonus track is obviously tossed off.
Those of us who are lukewarm on Kala can take solace in the fact that M.I.A. is close to hitting the bull's-eye, though, and close to the balance between Arular's cohesive barrage and Kala's scattered, but matured, brilliance.
But what's most important is not only has M.I.A. expanded her sound using the Third World, but focused her microscope on it, too.
It didn't make for an essential musical album, but an essential social one. You decide what's more important.
