Imogen Heap - Speak For Yourself

Heap's voice, an ephemeral elastic thing that more often than not disappears into the music. It's hard to believe that someone executing these vocal gymnastics can also evaporate so easily. Sometimes, she gets lost within her own songs; sometimes, she gets lost within her own round-robin multi-tracking trickery. The pouting on "Daylight Robbery" is as loud as she gets, and even that's soft as silk. More often than not, the listener is caressed with whispers and sighs and innocuous vowels-as-words attached to lyrics that are often as airy as her vocals. There's also Heap's tendency to indiscriminately toss in those little yelp-sighs that some singers (hello, Ms. McLachlan) lean on until it turns from "charming affectation" to "offputting tic".
Having said that, there's no reason why this album can't be the subject of a torrid aural love affair. Her ostentatiousness is endearing, if you can swallow both the musical and vocal flourishes. And when Heap's personality shines through all the trappings and inadvertent emulations (somewhere before the chorus in "Goodbye and Go", for example), it's a welcome breath of fresh air. And it's not like the songs are bad. They're just too much, and pity the fool with no patience for pretty frou frou stuff listening to any of this. The black sheep of the bunch, "Hide and Seek"-- aka That Song From "The O.C."-- best exemplifies the strengths and weaknesses of this album. The track consists of nothing but a Vocoder and her voice singing stuff about crop circles and sewing machines. It's gorgeous, it's impressive, it's grandiose, and it's barely there at all-- just Heap's voice darting and divebombing, making itself scarce, disappearing into itself.

more at Pitchfork


Part 1
Part 2