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Rós, collaborates with his boyfriend on his first solo project, Go, only Jónsi's second recording in English. Go captured fans who never heard of Sigur Ros, and deserves many more. Jonsi lets loose with a voice that soars into the atmosphere, not a falsetto. With maybe the most blissfully beautiful voice I've heard in ages and some of the most similarly beautiful newborn music in existence—and some of the most mysterious and ephemerous— this unique sound is a must-listen. Go Live, recorded in England and Belgium, includes songs not on Go. Plenty happens live that doesn't replicate but simulates the studio album's sophisticated effects. By doing it that way Jonsi and band retain the immediacy of a live performance. It's a beaut. Top Songs, Go: "Boy Lilikoi" is a flittering, jittery intertwining of flutes and beats, bowings and plucks, all swelling, all gliding, like a multichambered rococo courtyard. Hyper-euphony often rises on the wings of Jonsi's gorgeous voice into a fever pitch, seeming to generate its own shine at the precise moment prior to searing its speeding elements into a harmonics-rich tonal singularity. "Go Do" is every bit the hikingdownhill pastoral as its "surrender to summer" lyric. Driven by vocals approaching boy soprano range, "Grow Till Tall" is rooted in the longer-held atmospherics familiar to Sigur Ros fans, before tipping into a staccato stampede of snares and fuzzy static." Top Songs, Go Live: "Icicle Sleeve," "Kolnidur," "Tornado," "Boy Lilikoi," "Animal Arithmetic, "Around Us"
22. 8 SONGS ABOUT A GIRL ~ DEEP DARK ROBOT (LINDA PERRY & TONY TORNAY) (2010) IT'S LINDA PERRY! DEEP DARK ROBOT IS LINDA PERRY! (Mostly…) It's a crime that this album was a commercial flop. Linda Perry has a long, gold album-studded history. A few of her dozens of credits: Her
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initial splash came with 4 Non-Blondes, writing and providing indelible vocals for their hit "What's Up?" (aka "What's going on?"). She wrote "Beautiful," among a slew of other songs recorded by a roster including Christina Aguilera, Pink, Gwen Stefani, even the Violent Femmes' Gordon Gano. But Deep Dark Robot, her new band with drummer Tony Tornay, has created a fundamentally great Rock 'n' Roll album. It's seriously caustic and punk in all the right ways: taut, thick, frustrated, bluesy, classic hard-driving Rock'n'Roll angst about a girl, written, sung, and performed by the girl who fell hard for her. Perry, only human, needed to exorcise her obsessive demons. Even when it quiets down for a stretch, as at the start of "No One Wakes Me Up Like You," the sexual tension seethes. Or on the future-classic heartbreak song "You Mean Nothing To Me," the atmosphere drips with echoes of dissonance-turned-bitterness, a Rock staple. "Can't Getcha Out Of My Mind" borrows that steamy, seething, swamp-boogie from Creedence Clearwater Revival, down to a teenaged John Fogerty raspiness when the vocals wail. But it's the gonads-to-the-wall rockers that hit hardest. Bounce along and off-thewalls, with the distressed screeches of "I'm Coming For You." "Fuck You, Stupid Bitch" takes its Dance Rock cues from Prince's "Controversy," flaunting a tough but nasty! falsetto. (A Lesbian sings falsetto. How cool is that?) And "Won't You Be My Girl?" is the best Lesbian Rock anthem since "Come To My Window." Of the band's name, Perry says, "Deep Dark Robot is an artificial agent trying to be human." Given life's complexities and the mysteries of the heart, she adds, "Aren't we all just trying to be human?" CLASSIC HARD-DRIVING ROCK'N'ROLL ANGST ABOUT A GIRL, WRITTEN, SUNG, AND PERFORMED BY THE GIRL WHO FELL HARD FOR HER