Alright, Still

LILY ALLENALRIGHT, STILL

At this point I’m so out of touch with mainstream popular culture that I don’t even know if Lily Allen’s debut album, Alright, Still, is a smash hit on “TRL” or not. For all I know Allen could be wearing huge stylish sunglasses and slumming around with Paris Hilton and Lindsay Lohan. Honestly though, I don’t even know if anyone still cares about Paris.

Once or twice each year I buy a barefaced pop album, usually only hoping to get at least one legitimate gem. Past “gems” include Amerie’s “One Thing,” Justing Timberlake’s “Cry Me a River” and Gwen Stefani’s “What You Waiting For;” all songs I played loudly (and often) for a few weeks before deciding to never hear them again. My first gem hunt of 2007 led me to Allen’s much hyped British pop debut, and, lucky for me, the gems are there.

Easily the most organically produced blatant pop album I’ve heard since Andre’s The Love Below, Alright’s backdrops are most certainly over-produced, but they’re done so with the goal of never sounding dated. (The same can’t be said for the album’s artwork, which will look like a 1980s Trapper Keeper by year’s end.) Produced by a mixed bag of up-and-comers and British mainstays, Alright is full of drum beats – both from the garage and the machine, dance-friendly flourishes, reggae rhythms, dub production, flickering guitars, a million keyboards and prominently cutesy vocals.

Maybe still a teenager – again, I’m not sure – Allen writes from the perspective of an upper-20-something that always knows better but welcomes loads of drama regardless. Funny, clever and always confident, Allen’s vocal presence is – like Madonna on her first few albums – way ahead of its time. One would have to assume that before dropping out of high school, Allen was the kind of kid that wore The Slits T-shirts while her fellow students were (at the very best) arguing about Oasis and Blur. Citing The Smiths, The Happy Mondays and countless other worthwhile artists as her influences, Allen is clearly both well studied and entirely British to the bone. Armed with attitude, wit and deep down gloom, Allen offers a less ironic (but still purposefully ridiculous) glimpse at the fleeting teen existence than recently explored by The Hold Steady on their 2006 album, Boys and Girls in America.

Songs like “LDN,” “Shame for You,” “Smile,” “Friend of Mine” and “Nan, You’re a Window Shopper” are summer-soundtrack-ready tracks that will not only make Justin Timberlake sound dated, but should also re-expose him as the anything-it-takes pseudo-creative kiddie clubber he really is. Thought she doesn’t have near the supreme vocal style of female leads like Karen O, Jenny Lewis and Neko Case, Lily Allen has created a more than stellar guilty pleasure that is hopefully a glance of better things to come.  7.5/10

Written by G. William Locke