Life Is a Maze and Love Is a Riddle

One of my many reasons for my displeasure of I Love the New Millennium before the decade was even over is because you need time to get the full impact of the years and to better place things that overlapped years. For instance, in a decade we may look back on 2006/2007 as the year that Apple and the campaign ads inadvertently launched a new musical genre of quicky pop starting with Feist and later including Yael Naïm and The Ting Tings. Australian songstress Lenka could also fit into this category even though one of her songs haven’t been co-opted by Apple (yet, but she has been used in an Old Navy ad).

On her self titled debut, Lenka intertwines breezy pop with light emphasis on piano and drum looks. The highlight of the album is The Show, a hum a long anthem that is so catchy you may find yourself singing it at the most inopportune time. Lenka says about her album that it is a “mood enhancer” and adds, “I don’t like it when people are depressed. I want to cheer them up” and if The Show doesn’t lighten your mood you do not have a soul. Although you got to wonder why she would end the song with a chorus of people sing, “I want my money back.” I got to imagine that is not something you want an audience to sing at your show. But anyways.

Elsewhere on the album Knock Knock is a heart-felt love song that can bring you closer to that special someone. Songs like Dangerous and Sweet and Trouble Is a Friend sound like a long lost eighties New Wave hits. The rest of the album though doesn’t deviate from that formula for better or worse leaving the replay value fairly low. But hopefully on the next album, Lenka can expand more on what could be a winning formula.

Song to Download - The Show

Lenka gets a on my Terror Alert Scale.