CD Review: V.V Brown exhibits 50′s retro glam on debut album
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February 12, 2010 • written by Macy Linton
Filed under Reviews
As if the world didn’t have enough tall, gorgeous British songstresses with beautiful voices, here comes another one.
When it comes to the business of being famous, V.V Brown is like a kid in a candy shop, grabbing at a little bit of everything and stuffing it in her pockets for later. Not that a little excitement is a bad thing or anything, but in person, Brown’s enthusiasm comes off as painfully hip, her videos derived straight from trendy phone commercials and her music following the basic formula of “retro beats + British accent = Success!”
Despite her failings in art direction, her music, at least, is just that: a success. Brown has unquestionably achieved her goal of making an incredibly fun album with “Travelling Like a Light,” a doo-wop sensation made modern with keyboard and techno/video game elements that, despite the intrinsically upbeat attitude of doo-wop, is kept from being overpoweringly cheerful with bitter lyrics and soulful ballads.
With a straight-A school background and offers of scholarships from several elite colleges before deciding to go into music, Brown also has an intelligence that allows her to be both cute and nerdy and to craft lyrics that include references to asthma inhalers, comic books, barking sharks, and the like without sounding laughable.
Most of Brown’s songs combine elements of swing, hand jive, and 60′s Twist dance crazes, provided by quick-paced bass lines such as the one in “L.O.V.E.”
As for her other songs, “Shark in the Water” showcases her voice, the island feel of the song infusing her British accent with a reggae lilt. Both of her ballads, “Travelling like a Light” and “I Love You” are beautifully melodic. “Everybody” sounds like it could be a misplaced track from yet another British diva, Little Boots, while “Crazy Amazing” is straight up Motown. And “Crying Blood” may be the most “upbeat” angry, downtrodden breakup song I’ve ever heard.
Despite her tendency toward being tragically hip, the mass appeal of both doo-wop music and video games makes the album fairly straightforward, and more endearing than blatantly nonconformist (or “over-conformist,” as is usually the case with the tragically hip).
The result is that Brown sounds like a 50′s one-woman doo-wop android from Jamaica who owns a surfboard and knows how to do the hand jive–and if that’s not fun, I don’t know what is.
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