Review of TBWKTM in Telegraph.co.uk

[Gatagordinha]

Can't see it posted anywhere yet.

 

Mika - The Boy Who Knew Too Much, CD review

Mika's swooping, over the top arrangements and arch delivery make for contagiously merry pop music. Rating: * * *

 

By Thomas H Green

Published: 4:56PM BST 23 Sep 2009

 

 

Enthusiastically embraces the contemporary pop game: Mika In 2007 Mika burst from nowhere to become a worldwide star. The frothy pop of his debut album Life In Cartoon Motion sold six million copies and he picked up a Brit and an Ivor Novello along the way.

 

Yet, despite such cheerful ubiquity, or maybe because of it, he received plenty of flak. He was criticised by some for being imitative of the Scissor Sisters and Freddie Mercury; some sneered at the Lebanese-American Brit’s rarefied background – from Beirut to the Royal College of Music via Paris and Westminster School – while others noted that his preposterous theatricality emanated a strange neediness. All such criticism, however, misses the point, for Mika fits a very different archetype.

 

Before the age of the pop star, before vinyl even, pop revolved around sheet music and the song. The equivalent of an album was a musical, a host of songs, often ridiculously frivolous, strung together on a flimsy plotline.

 

Mika is disco-friendly and enthusiastically embraces the contemporary pop game, but really he’s a songsmith of this very old school – orchestra-educated and touting unashamed populism for all ages with no theme or wordplay too silly to be worth a punt.

 

Thus Toy Boy, built around parlour room piano, is pure Disney, albeit filtered through a fractured, slightly risqué lens; Dr John has the makings of a raucous pub singalong; and even the disco throb of Rain cannot resist mutating into luscious symphonies.

 

Throughout the album, Mika’s arrangements, particularly of the string sections, swoop right over the top, notably on the slushy I See You, but they are nothing compared to his arch delivery. If there’s a more self-consciously camp intro than Good Gone Girl this year, I’d like to hear it.

 

Occasionally, he does wander musically off-piste, intriguingly so on the gentle African-flavoured Blue Eyes, which recalls Paul Simon’s Graceland period, but these moments are the exceptions.

 

The Boy Who Knew Too Much contains far too much sugar to consume in one sitting, and its less successful moments recall forgotten US soft-rocker Christopher Cross of Arthur’s Theme. However, when Mika hits a seam of gold he’s a flamboyant, showman songwriter and his second album lights up with gigantic and contagiously merry pop music.

 

 

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/music/cdreviews/6223559/Mika---The-Boy-Who-Knew-Too-Much-CD-review.html

[chickadee]

Interesting. Not sure what the phrase "musically off-piste" means, and therefore whether it's a criticism or praise, but it would appear that he generally, in an overall fashion, likes the album.

 

I find it amusing that amongst all these generally positive reviews, everybody has such diverse opinions about which are the songs that work and which are the ones that don't. Must mean there's something for everyone on there:teehee: