Review Summary: Imogen Heap is a creative force of music that she alone conducts, and conducts it well.
British singer Imogen Heap already created for herself a decent musical background before her third solo departure
Ellipse. Before she went solo, Heap was a singer for the alternative band Frou Frou. After announcing a hiatus for the band, Imogen decided to make some music of her own and this spawned the solo act in which Heap would write and program everything herself. Her first two albums
iMegaphone and
Speak For Yourself went off with success. The latter of which held the single “Hide and Seek,” which uprising R&B artist Jason DeRulo sampled in his song “Whatcha Say” that shot straight up to the number one position, also giving Heap a lift on the charts as well. Then in August of 2009 Heap released her third album
Ellipse, recorded in the playroom of her childhood home and named for the unique elliptical shape of that home. An artist’s third album is debatably one of their most important as it represent a make or breaking point, making a dramatic sound change can cause the listeners to question the artists true style, while keeping the exact same sound as the previous two albums can make the listeners bored. Imogen, knowing her way around a studio, does neither of these and greatly improves and polishes the talents so obviously displayed on
iMegaphone and
Speak For Yourself.
The album opens with its only single, “First Train Home,” a mellow song with very clean vocals and only a light synthesizer backdrop. The lyrics, “Bodies disengaged, our mouths are fleshing over/It's just an echo game, irises retreating/to ovals of white/The urge to feel your face/And blood rushing to paint my handprint,” at first they seem haunting but are exposed as more insecure and frightened rather than frightening. While a decent song, it is not a good representation of the tone of the album and frankly seems like a bad choice as the one and only single.
Ellipse’s true sound is fleshed out in the song “Earth,” which as the name would suggest is a very natural and under-produced track. In fact “Earth” features no instruments, but instead all the background noises created by human voices including lip popping and high pitched backing vocals. While not all songs on the album are done in this way, the overall uplifting tone of “Earth” matches the album in general.
The best, and most single worthy song on the album comes about midway through with “Swoon.” This song features numerous vocal layers like “Earth” in certain parts but mainly uses a light drumming sound to add backbone to Heap’s already incredible vocals. Seconds before the chorus breaks in the song pauses for a brief little intermission of humming, then the powerfully proclaimed lines, “Swoon and fall into my arms/Let me be the great scott/Tip top pit stop in your ocean/I could be the shipmate's wife/Got you down and dirty with the lotion!” Hook after hook Imogen weaves her way through this tune into the second half of the whole album. This second half introduces us to, “Bad Body Double,” Heap’s most innovative song to say the least. It begins with the sound of Imogen getting out of the shower and singing with an echo, and then it jumps into the classic polished studio sound that has a more flat range in singing rather than her usual clean cut vocals. Something funny about the song is that the songs verses have a distinctive slapping sound, Heap has stated herself that this slapping noise is actually….in her own word….her ass. To get that unique slapping noise Imogen recorded herself slapping her own ass. It is easy to see that Imogen is a prime situation as to creative artists making it far opposed to traditional studio artists.
The obvious thing taken from
Ellipse is that the second half is much stronger than the first, although both are great in general. From the instrumental, “The Fire” and the extremely catchy and memorable “Aha!” it is clear the second half is superior to the previous. Altogether though that album is a driving force of alternative and pop music blended together. Each song is just a little bit different in sound creating an overall interesting listen. The album has its low tempo moments but the fast tempo moments add a wonderful flair to
Ellipse. It is very difficult to sit through this entire album and not come out with a more optimistic view on, quite frankly…anything!
you write reasonably well, just needs practice. i'd also recommend reading other people's more widely..
