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My reaction to So L'il's previous album was strongly mixed, but I decided to give the prolific duo another chance with this more recent disc, and fortunately the results, while still mixed, are a vast improvement.
My biggest problem last time around was the lyrics, and this time the only obvious place where you get "oh no" lyrics is on the second track, "Caribbean Dreams." Interestingly, the best tracks are the odd-numbered ones, most of which feature the bell-clear vocals of Robin Mapes, which are much stronger than those of her bandmate Ben Malkin. Particular highlights are the rubberbandy "Birds," the harmonious electro-indiepop of "Inside," and the rumbling glitchiness of "Useless." As for the less-enjoyable tracks, "Receive" is lo-fi and weird, like a Warn Defever side project, and the final track, "The Outwordly Ugly Secretly Beautiful" [sic], clocks in at 17 minutes! It's alternately creepy and goofy, with a lot of lyrical improvisation, including some lines about bagels with scallion cream cheese that made me chuckle. What these kids need most is an editor, because the good stuff on here is really excellent. (mike.11.05)
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I have kind of a love-hate thing going on with this disc. Let's start with the negatives. So L'il made a bad first impression on me with the misplaced apostrophe in their name (in a contraction, the apostrophe goes where the omitted letters would be, so "little" should be "li'l", not "l'il") and the use of "z" for plurals in the album credits (e.g. "vocalz, beatz"). Also, the album art is just horrible. These nitpicks are just a leadup to my main complaint, though, which is that I find the lyrics to be pretty ludicrous, trying far too hard to be "edgy" and "sexy" and with an inflated sense of self-importance. For some reason it makes me think of the "You Got F'd in the A" episode of South Park, where the situation is completely ridiculous but all the characters take it very, very seriously. The best example of this is the track "De Apocalypso", which repeats the unintentionally hilarious lyric "Everybody's got their s*** / Let it flow / Slow". Eeeewww. Maybe So L'il is trafficking in intentional self-parody, but it doesn't seem that way to me.
Here's the shocker, though: if I ignore the lyrics, somehow I find this disc to be very listenable. The music is skewed, off-kilter electro-pop/New Wave with some dub and R&B elements; it's a sound which would have been at home on Too Pure in the early 90s. At times, they also make me think of a more synthesizer-centric My Bloody Valentine. The track "Bye By Zooey" [sic?] uses a backward-tracked vocal to neat effect; the phrasing ends up sounding like Liz Frasier (and you get a break from the lyrics). The music is enjoyable and flows really well and I'd listen to it again so I could give you a better description, but man, I just don't think I can get past those lyrics. (mike.03.05)
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