I don’t like it.
Despite repeated plays and an admiration for certain aspects of ‘Speak For Yourself’ when it comes down to the music and nothing else IMOGEN HEAP’S second solo album is just not my cup of tea. When you have to start making a conscious effort to find the positives to justify your decision then surely the game must already be up. Music should be able to hit the parts that other sensory triggers cannot reach by the simple impact of its emotional clout. And despite all its shiny baubles and glittering details ‘Speak For Yourself’ leaves me cold.
Contrived is the main word that has built a barrier between me and this album. ‘Speak For Yourself’ may very well have been a labour of love for HEAP as her sleeve-notes outline (re-mortgaging to pay for it, ignoring friends to complete it, that sort of thing) but I can only hear the labour rather than the love. The multi-layering of tracks has created a busy sound full of diverting musical incidents but has also given most songs a restless quality that prevents the listener from truly engaging with the abundant melodies on offer.
On top of these sonic tiers sits HEAP’S voice. She uses her vocals (often treated) primarily as an integral instrument in her music – the phrasing is percussive to match the beats – rather than as the one human contribution to guide us through the electronic sounds and rhythms. The mechanisation of the vocals only acts as a further deterrent to embracing HEAP’S music. Often her vocals sound over-cooked and over-played whereas a more simplistic line would have provided a welcome and warming contrast to the flitting restless quality of her electronic musical backdrop. It’s something that Alison Goldfrapp manages, seemingly effortlessly.
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What is not in doubt is that HEAP is a good song-writer. All the tracks without exception display a wealth of melodic ideas and good intentions. But the inherent beauty of her writing is lost in a sonic world over-stuffed with artificiality and studio trickery. The most blatant culprit is ‘Hide And Seek’ the one song that ditches all computerised instrumentation in favour of an acappella setting. So what does HEAP do? She filters her vocals through a vocoder and once again masks the human face of her music with the distractions of technology. Marrying the quirkiness of Tori Amos with the aesthetic of Squarepusher and uZiq might sound good on paper but it does not translate onto CD, certainly not in HEAP’S overcomplicated hands.
I’m not one who subscribes to the view that electronic music cannot move you or be capable of reaching uncharted emotional depths - as my CD collection testifies – but it must also be able to provoke a response that it is intuitive rather than rational for the listener to become truly passionate about it. IMOGEN HEAP is evidently a talented individual but her unchecked rampaging creativity and dependency on studio tools has left the heart of her music languishing somewhere far away from the final product.
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