The extravagance displayed on the second release proper from English-via-Sri-Lankan pop prodigy M.I.A. will likely inspire some suspicious critical glances. Even some of the critics who favorably reviewed the world-beat-hop-’n’-b gumbo that was 2005’s Arular insinuated that she had bit off more than she could chew. (Her surface-militant politics, which infuse not just her words but also her artillery BEATS, no doubt added to their sense of unease.) Anyone hoping M.I.A. would scale back her ambitions this time around, or “refine” her sound, will be disappointed. Kala expands Arular’s internationalist outreach, splattering ideas and sounds on a canvas few other Western pop musicians even know exists.
“Bamboo Banga,” the album’s opening chant-rhyme, delivers a good approximation of the schizo-craziness that lurks within: cold jammers and macarenas, gun powder and hyenas, road runners and jungle bangers, madman hummers, bummers and Indians in the summer, etc. Things get progressively stranger. The chorus of the Clash-sampling “Paper Planes” has a firing-squad beat followed by the ka-ching of a cash register, with vocals provided by young children. The bubblegum-industrial vocoder anthem “20 Dollar,” a rebuke to her critics, includes this bon mot: “People judge me so hard ’cause I don’t floss my teeth.” A joke? Perhaps, but like so much of Kala it feels like a sentiment possibly worthy of deeper consideration.
I said “possibly.” Though Kala impresses with its chutzpah, it also unnerves with its incoherence, though lately I find I’m even enjoying the tracks which I know deep down aren’t up to snuff (i.e., the shrill sing-along “Boyz”). When, in “Paper Planes,” M.I.A. insists that she has “more records than the KGB,” the point isn’t that her record collection is great, but rather, that she fashions music from it that sounds like the future. The future of what, you ask? Your guess is as good as mine—and hers.
M.I.A.
Kala
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