Janelle Monαe The ArchAndroid (Suites II & III) (Atlantic)
5/5
By: Rachel Bolland
The Rockfeedback community is a fairly disparate one, made up of music fans from all walks of life, all ages, all backgrounds. In the 18 months or so that I’ve been involved with this big, loving mess I’ve never seen an artist that appears to have united everyone in sheer adoration - that is, until Janelle Monáe’s performance on Letterman was posted on YouTube and spread through the online music community like wild fire. The hair! The tuxedo! The voice! The DANCING! Everything about it was just unspeakably ace.
And then came the album. The talk of a 70-minute epic tale of Monáe’s cyber alter-ego, Cindi Mayweather (a follow up to her early EP, Metropolis: Suite I (The Chase)), made it sound incredibly ambitious to say the least. I’m not going to lie, I was slightly concerned that the ridiculously high concept would overshadow the music and be so eccentric that parts of it were rendered completely unlistenable. What little faith I had.
Even with being so high concept The ArchAndroid continuously leaps from dizzying high to dizzying high. Throughout the 18-tracks, Monáe touches upon, and completely perfects, so many different genres and styles of music that it’s impossible to define. There’s pop, R ‘n’ B, hip hop, electro, soul, funk and anything else you care to think of - you think of a genre and it’ll probably have reared its head somewhere on the record.
The first of the pair of suites is arguably the most accessible, and it contains the first two singles, ‘Cold War’ and ‘Tightrope’. The latter is the wondrous 4 minute melange of funk, soul, R ‘n’ B and amazingness that made us all fall for her in the first place – there’s just not enough good things to say about it. It’s a song that brings a breath of fresh air and a particular fierceness to the current R ‘n’ B scene and establishes Janelle Monáe as a central player in a rebellion against the idea that female R ‘n’ B singers have to be the stereotypical bellowing diva. ‘Oh, Maker’ is a stunning pop ballad lamenting on lost love, which immediately gives way to an almost punk track – ‘Come Alive (War of Roses)’, a perfect marriage of hardcore bass lines and Monáe’s soulful, swooping vocals, which somehow lend themselves with equal ease to rock and soul.
Once she moves into Suite III, Monae becomes a little more adventurous. But what The Archandroid here loses in accessibility it gains in uniqueness and originality. The second movement strays into much more eccentric territory, with ‘Make The Bus’ (a collaboration with those well-known ambassadors of weird, of Montreal) being a particular moment of awe along with ‘Wondaland’. Eight-minute closer ‘BaBopBye Ya’ brings all the dramatics of the record to a fitting climax, encapsulating the concept and perfectly showcasing her talent to produce songs that just leave you completely stupefied.
‘The ArchAndroid’ is an incredible, utterly breathtaking record. If there’s anyone more deserving of uniting the Rockfeedback office in so much love and admiration I can’t wait to hear them.
Artists in this article: Janelle Monae
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