Mika - Life in Cartoon Motion
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CD Details
Artist: MikaEdition: Music CD
CD Release Date: 2007-03-27
Music Label: Casablanca
Soundtracks:
- Grace Kelly
- Lollipop
- My Interpretation
- Love Today
- Relax (Take It Easy)
- Ring Ring
- Any Other World
- Billy Brown
- Big Girl (You Are Beautiful)
- Stuck In The Middle
- Erase
- Happy Ending
Music reviews of Life in Cartoon Motion
Music Review: The album gets better and better
Rating: 5 Stars
I first heard the track "Lollipop" at work on a day when things were not going well, the song lifted up my whole day. Later I looked up MIKA and listened to samples of other tracks. This is usually the point where one discovers an album with one or two "good" tracks and a dozen filler tracks, not so here. It got better and better the more I listened. Musically, the sound does resemble Scissor Sisters, Queen, Harry Nilsson, even a bit of Chicago and Leo Sayer, which is fine because that sound worked in the 1970's and it works now.
The cover and insert art is based on work by both MIKA and his sister Yasmine (DaWack). The comprehensive liner notes show that MIKA's sisters Zuleika and Paloma have sung backup on a couple of tracks, and that MIKA is unafraid to use novelties like spoon orchestras in his work.
Music critics either love MIKA or love to hate him as an artist, calling his work derivative, calling him a cynic, claim he is exploiting the Penniman family friend Raffa Kobeisi's story on a spoken word track on the CD, etc. Forget about all of it, just go with the music, it's worth it.
Description of Life in Cartoon Motion
`Historic', `sensational', `flamboyant' and `without-any-doubt original' are just some of the adjectives being thrown around by critics in praise of 22 year-old UK newcomer, Mika's eclectic debut album, Life In Cartoon Motion.Fun, smart, musically adventurous and thematically provocative, the songs on Life In Cartoon Motion, all of them written and produced by Mika, combine euphoric rushes of melody with darker unexpected elements. They range from bright daytime melodramas to night-time tales of love, loss, abandonment, hope and happiness. Each is a splendid blend of fresh imagination and deft pop craftsmanship.
Album gems such as "Grace Kelly," "Lollipop," Billy Brown," and "Relax And Take It Easy," display Mika's innovative wordplay. `I've always respected people who make great records to their own vision,' writes the quixotic Mika. Mission accomplished!
The pop world might be all cooing 'n' cross-eyed over this flamboyant elfin with extended tail-feathers, as if it were shaken suddenly from a slumber, but the arrival of such a character was in fact always inevitable. He's an unlikely but traceable amalgamation of random pop culture explosions from the past few years--two parts Paulo Nutini, one part Kemal from Big Brother, a dash of Daphne & Celeste, a barrel measure of Scissor Sisters, and another pinch of post-ironic dancing to Elton John at the Students' Union gone midnight. It's no secret that the UK has a weakness for pretty-boy singer songwriters either--he fits in there too, in that he's about to stick its index finger in the socket and pour it a drink.
Give it 12 months and you might be taking out a restraining order--Mika will split opinion--but his quasi-soul falsetto is unbelievable, that much is immediately obvious. There are moments nearing syrupy Feeling-esque normalcy (take "My Interpretation"), but those aside it's high camp insatiability all the way. There's a hint of Freddie Mercury's theatricality in the voice, and in "Big Girl" he's even written a modern day "Fat Bottomed Girls". "Lollipop" is Jake Shears leading the Jackson 5, "Love Today" is the missing link between the Bee Gees and Village People and "Relax, Take It Easy" is a chilled Pet Shop Boys in gold lam?. Too cheesy to be a classic, perhaps, but this is just the brand of subversive eccentricity Robbie has failed miserably to achieve over his past few albums. --James Berry
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