Career of Evil by Robert Galbraith

Career of Evil

I didn’t immediately fall in love with this series of books. I hadn’t read The Casual Vacancy, but I was looking for something to top Harry Potter, so, honestly, the Cuckoo’s Calling was a bit of a let down, the premise a little unoriginal, but still, I went for the second book, and The Silkworm was what really sold me on this series. In the second book, Galbraith really gets deeper into the characters and their relationships with a more complex, gruesome murder investigation. After reading it, I was downright excited for Career of Evil, hoping it would dig deeper into Comoran and Robin and everyone else, and it delivered.

Career of Evil picks up a few months after The Silkworm with Strike’s business thriving but all of that comes crashing down when a severed leg is delivered to the office addressed to Robin. So the question is who put it there? And, of course, why?

The Good

• The characters. I feel like they are the backbone of all three of these books, especially this one where the premise hits so close to home to them. The depth and the backstory just reach new heights and the dynamics between characters is so complex and well written. Some books you keep reading to get through the plot, but some you read (the really good ones) because it’s so satisfying to watch the characters change, act, and adapt.
• I think this one was my favorite out of the three just because of how driven it was by the characters and how much it was able to delve into their pasts and relationships. I felt that the mystery in Career of Evil was the least important part of the novel, and was just sort of a catalyst for the personal development of the characters.
• Galbraith really gets to show off some really great writing skills. The prose is detailed and descriptive, but flowing, and dialogue is spot on.
• The ending was incredibly frustrating, but in a good way. It was simultaneously a clear resolution and a massive cliffhanger. I’m impatiently for the fourth book.

The Bad

• Some of the minor characters were underdeveloped and a little unbelievable, especially Detective Carver, and Matthew to some extent, but I find this forgivable. They’re minor characters for a reason, we only see one side of them, I don’t need them to feel complete.
• There were a chapters here and there that were told from the killer’s perspective, and I could honestly live without them. I didn’t find them interesting, I didn’t think they added anything. I mostly just skimmed them to get back to the rest of the story.

Overall

My favorite thing about the Comoran Strike books is that, to me, they are incredibly character driven, and Galbraith does it so well. These are books about the people who solve the mysteries and not actually about the mysteries themselves, but it makes an intriguing backdrop for their development and relationships.

8.25/10 – A really strong addition to the series and a great way for JKR to move on from Harry Potter. Each book only gets better, so after reading this my expectations are high for the next one.

 

 

Edgewater by Courtney Sheinmel

Edgewater

Recently, I had the pleasure of visiting Powell’s City of Books in Portland, Oregon (the largest independent bookstore in the world, and it was really quite amazing but that’s a story for another time), but it was on the shelves there that I saw Courtney Sheinmel’s Edgewater for the first time, and I was incredibly intrigued.

Lorrie is a privledged kid, in a lot of ways. She has the money for basically everything she wants in life, but her mom left her and her sister when Lorrie was five and ran off to England for a new life. She left Lorrie and her sister and in care of their off-kilter Aunt Gigi. And Lorrie’s life is decaying, her family’s mansion is falling apart, and one day she finds out has no savings, and all her money is gone. But then one day she meets Charlie, the senator’s son and the secrets of his life begin to become entangled in those of her own, and the mysteries buried in her life all come rising to the surface.

The Good

• The characters, were, for the most part, interesting (there were some exceptions). I liked Lennox, Lorrie’s best friend. I really liked Susannah, Lorrie’s younger sister, the sweet, innocent peacekeeper who deserves better than her no good boyfriend Brian (but who loves him anyway). I loved Susannah; I was rooting for her as much if not more than I was rooting for Lorrie.
• The supporting characters played important roles, they weren’t just sort of floating around as background sounds.
• Lorrie’s relationship with her horse was touching. The bond between them was obviously strong.
• Sheinmel was quite descriptive, especially of Edgewater. The rot and the decay was so palpable that all I really wanted was for someone to clean it up and do some renovations. The condition of Edgewater was important, though, and really set the tone for Lorrie’s situation, the decay of Edgewater was also a key aspect to Gigi’s characterization which I felt was a strong point in the novel.

The Bad

• There was nothing wrong with most of the characters, but it can be really, really hard to sympathize with rich people having financial issues. I understand that Lorrie’s issues run deeper than that, but I found myself wanting to role my eyes at her sometimes.
• Charlie. I didn’t like Charlie. I feel like Sheinmel tried so hard to make him seem charming, like a boy every seventeen year old girl could help but fall in love with, but I never understood why Lorrie wasted her time with him, and their relationship never really felt very fleshed out. He was more of a plot device than a love interest.
• The relationship between Lennox and Lorrie didn’t really feel the way you’d expect it to between two girls who had been best friends for over a decade. I felt like Lorrie had a stronger connection with her horse, honestly.
• The ending felt really anti-climatic. You’d think that the big reveal would feel dramatic and satisfying. It didn’t. It just kind of happened, just sort of like everything else in the book.

Overall

Edgewater is an enjoyable read with some issues, but its biggest flaw is that it never really lives up the premise. It was never as interesting as I felt it should have been, the characters never felt as deep as they could have been. Overall, it just adds up to it feeling slightly emotionless. Edgewater didn’t move me the way it should have – the mystery wasn’t compelling and neither was the romance – and in four months, I’ll probably have forgotten all about it.

5.5/10 – It’s a quick read, an enjoyable read, but ultimately forgettable.

Wiped Out!, The Neighbourhood

Wiped Out!

I really enjoyed The Neighbourhood’s first album, but not enough that I really followed them. I didn’t know there was another album out until I heard “R.I.P. 2 My Youth” on the radio not too long ago, and it piqued my interest. I really liked it, and became intrigued in the rest of the album to see how the band’s sound has grown and changed, hoping that Wiped Out!  would be a strong follow up to their debut.

Track by Track

I. A moment of Silence – With a title like this, I don’t know what I was expecting, but it actually wasn’t silence. Interesting idea, but I don’t really understand what it’s doing here.
II. Prey – I like the lyrics, they’re interesting and not always obvious. It’s a great “first” song on the album. It established to me that The Neighbourhood have changed without altering the core of their sound and style.
III. Cry Baby – This song is a little corny, but that’s okay. It has some really nice, honest lyrics, like “I think I try too hard, how I look, what I do, what I’m saying. I spend too much time explaining myself, I hope there’s some time to change it.” But in the end it’s a pretty catchy song with a nice melody and nice vocals.
IV. Wiped Out! – I love this song, one of my favorites. I love the lyrics, but my favorite is probably “I got the pressure that’s pushing my buttons and making me think about death.” It’s a slightly longer song, but it’s broken in the middle with a nice instrumental interlude that I really love.
V. The Beach – I love the opening of this, it’s nice and calming. The lyrics are a little cliche at times, but they also have this powerful honestly and bluntness. I really like the lyrics in the chorus though: “I’m sick and I’m tired too. I can admit, I am not fireproof I feel it burning me, I feel it burning you. I hope I don’t murder me, I hope I don’t burden you. If I do, I do.”
VI. Daddy Issues – I actually really hate this song, and I really hate the whole concept of “daddy issues.” I find the line “I’d do whatever I could do, I’d run away and hide with you. I love that you got daddy issues, and I do too” a little disturbing, and the term ‘little girl’ just kind of rubs me the wrong way. The song has a nice melody and nice sound, but I cannot get past the lyrics, especially the chorus. I guess it’s just a personal preference.
VII. Baby Came Home 2 / Valentines – I like this song (these two songs? – I’m not sure), especially the blunt honest lyrics that you come to expect from the Neighbourhood, and the nice instrumental which was actually my favorite part of the song and gave a nice lead in and set up for “Greetings From California.”
VIII. Greetings From California – I really liked the opening of this one. I like the juxtaposition of the upbeat and the more hypnotizing, lush parts. One of my favorites on the album.
IX. Ferrari – The beginning is a nice contrast from “Greetings From California,” but overall I didn’t like it as much. There were some nice lyrics, “you treat all the rules like you’re the queen, but you and I are few and far between.” I liked the beginning and end, but the middle of the song was kind of bland.
X. Single – This is another one that’s also really corny, but I guess that’s what happens when you try to be so blunt. It had a nice sound, though, I liked the more stripped down acoustic-y instrumental, but overall I wasn’t a fan.
XI. R.I.P 2 My Youth – To me I feel like this is a whole summary of what this album feels like. It’s all about mourning the past and youth and childhood and growing up. I’m sure I listen to this album differently than other people just because I’ve had different experiences, though. But this is honestly one of my favorite songs on the album. I love the lyrics and the emotion. An interesting way to end the album.

Overall

I like the Neighbourhood, I really do. They have a lush, melancholy sound and sincere, honest lyrics, which sometimes come off as cheesy and cliche. Wiped Out! had it’s weak moments, but overall I thought it was a decent album. There were a few tracks that really stood out to me, but a few that I just didn’t like.

6.5/10 – I like this album, but I just didn’t love it. It’s nice, and there are some songs that I even really like, but overall it doesn’t really impress, and I don’t like it as much as their first.

The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest by Stieg Larsson

The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest

This is a book that I’ve been meaning to read for literally years. I read the first two, and always put off the next (and up until recently, last) one in the series. They move slowly and when I’m busy I don’t have that kind of patience. And I heard that the ending was bad, that he was planning to write a fourth one and they way the third ended was unsatisfying. When I saw that The Girl in the Spider’s Web had come out, I knew I was out of excuses. It was time to read this one.

It picks up right where The Girl who Played with Fire left off with Lisbeth going under the knife to remove a bullet from her brain and all the characters facing the fallout from the Zalachenko affair.

The Good

• Lisbeth Salander. I have loved her since the first book. I love her unapologetic (and justified) anger. Actually, I just sort of love the fact that she’s unapologetic about everything she does. She’s original, she’s deep, she’s complex. She’s hands down my favorite character in the book.
• Larsson really makes his characters come to life as three-dimensional, real people. Full of flaws, all of them are pieces to the puzzle. They are what hold up the book and help it come together.
• The complexity. Everything is so interwoven and complex, which is also this book’s biggest downfall (as I address later). This book was written with incredible precision, planned incredibly scrupulously. He builds upon his previous two books to create a rich reinvention of reality.
• It’s such a unique and original series of books! It’s not quite crime fiction, or mystery, or courtroom drama. It’s some transcendent blend of all of these. I haven’t read anything like them before. And I think it’s because of this that the books don’t rely on any cliches of these genres.

The Bad

• It’s slow. It’s like wading through mud. I spend the first 100 pages waiting for the pace to pick up, waiting for more to happen, and before I knew it I was 50 pages from the end. It’s riddled with details that I’m not certain matter. But in another sense that’s really why I like it. It all comes together to create a complex and original storyline.
• This isn’t necessarily a bad point, but the writing style is very straightforward. It’s nothing deeply elegant, but it doesn’t need to be. The story speaks for itself and it doesn’t detract from the book at all.
• I honestly had a hard time juggling all of the characters and remembering who was who, and what their job was, and who they worked for. There’s a lot going on and it was sometimes just a bit too much for my brain to remember. I think all of the minor characters were what slowed the book down so much. However, at the same time, even the most minor characters played important roles in the plot, but I probably could have lived without knowing all their life stories.

Overall

These books always have a special place in my heart, and nothing can change that. It’s not a perfect book, but it’s incredibly interesting, and now I’m more excited than ever to finally get the ending to the series.

And now that I’ve finally read the book, I’m going to let myself watch the movie.

7.5/10 – It’s slow. It’s not perfect. It’s meticulous. I loved every moment of it despite that though.

Daughters Unto Devils by Amy Lukavics

Daughters Unto Devils

I saw this book while wondering through the YA section of Barnes and Nobles one day, and the title jumped out at me, so I read the synopsis. It began simply, Amanda Verner and her family move to a new house – a countless number of books start this way, but this one took an interesting twist. When the arrive at the house, the floors are covered in blood, and Amanda is carrying the baby of a postboy she left behind. I was intrigued by this. I don’t read a lot of horror, but I’m always interested in anything involving the supernatural.

The Good 

• My biggest concern was that this book would fall prey to YA cliches and archetypes, and it didn’t. It didn’t avoid cliches altogether, but they didn’t bog down the book.
• I really enjoyed Amanda’s inner monologue. She has a lot of interesting things to say, but she can tend to get kind of repetitive with them. (She refer’s to last winter an awful lot of times before we get any kind of explanation, and even then it comes in pieces). But overall I thought Amanda was a realistic character, and Lukavics made the torment she felt come to life.
• It’s not the scariest thing ever, but it is creepy for sure.
• Lukavics uses the setting to her advantage, and it’s a very big part of what makes the book work on any level. I think that if it had been set in present day, the novel wouldn’t have been as effective. The empty prairie the Verners move to really helps create the sinister mood.
• I liked the ending. It was ambiguous, but, when done well, I love ambiguous endings. It left me with questions, but they weren’t necessarily questions I feel the book needed to answer for me. It left me with the ability to interpret it for myself.

The Bad

• As a YA novel Daughters Unto Devils avoids a lot of typical tropes and cliches, but as a horror novel, it doesn’t. I don’t read a lot of horror, and I do feel like there are some original moments in the plot, but there are very few ways to effectively reinvent a haunting, and Lukavics attempt is only half-successful in my opinion.
• The pacing was weird. I felt no real build-up to the climax, and I felt like chronologically it could have started in a better place. The beginning felt too long, and the suspense didn’t feel drawn out enough.
• I never felt like I had a complete picture of Amanda’s family. She only really tells us what pertains to the plot and it leaves her family members feeling a little shallow and thin. She talks a lot about how she and her sister are close, but I didn’t feel like they were close. I didn’t feel much emotional attachment to the characters.
• I feel like there’s no good way to say this, but, overall, I just wanted more. I wanted more detail about the prairie and life in early America, more historical context. I wanted Amanda to go deeper into what happened last winter and the horror it caused her family; I wanted it to feel gut-wrenching. I wanted more complexity in the way the plot unfolded. More mystery. More suspense. More depth. I wanted more tension and more discomfort leading up to the climax. I wanted this book to be more than just a YA horror novel.

Overall

Honestly, I had high expectations for this book despite my better judgement. I knew that it could end up being filled with predictable cliches and bad writing, but I hoped it wouldn’t be. And while it wasn’t as bad as I feared it would be, I feel like it never rose to the level it could have. I think there’s a lot of depth in it that could have been explored in more detail – Amanda’s family, her relationship with them, the prairie. It’s told in first person, and I think that results in the fairly limited view we get of her family and life. Daughters Unto Devil‘s biggest flaw is how shallow it is. The things it does well, it could do even better.

And actually, I’d really love to see this adapted into a movie. I think a movie could really capitalize on the eerie atmosphere of the prairie.

5.5/10 – An easy, quick read. I had high expectations that weren’t met, but I still enjoyed it. I look forward to her next books, but I hope they’re better than this one was.

The Martian by Andy Weir

The Martian

Sitting in an airport with my brother earlier this summer is where I first heard about this book. My brother had loved it. He studies geophysics and is really interested in space, and loved that the book actually made scientific sense. The premise sounded so interesting – a man, Mark Watney, gets stranded on Mars and has to figure a way back home. It sounds haunting and grueling and traumatic, and that’s what I was expecting. That’s what I wanted. That wasn’t what I got, though.

The Good

• I was actually really into this book for the first fifty pages or so. It’s fast-paced, Mark Watney is a delightful smartass, and there was a lot of accurate science-y stuff. For fifty pages, that was all good. For the remaining 300+ pages, it got old.
• Andy Weir is obviously an incredibly smart person, and that shows. A massive amount of research went into this, and I appreciate that. There’s a lot of scientific accuracy here, and he makes it pretty easy for someone like me (with very little knowledge of chemistry, biology, and physics) to understand.

The Bad

• If I had to pinpoint the one thing I didn’t like about this book, it would be that it just doesn’t go anywhere. The plot fell into a repetitive pattern that made it really easy to stop caring about. I just wanted to get to the end, and once I did it seemed awfully anti-climatic. Maybe it’s just me personally, but I felt like the book had no drive to it.
• The more I read, the less reasons I found to read. I guess that’s what I mean when I say it went nowhere. There was no character development, and there was no depth to Watney. He cracked a couple of good jokes and talked a lot about how he was going to fix ‘x’ so it could do ‘y’ so he could stay alive a little longer. That’s it. That was (almost) the whole book.
• The parts of the book that weren’t just Watney’s (dull) logs of life on Mars were a little more interesting. However, all of those people down there at NASA working to bring him home never really felt like people. They were just characters that needed to exist because Watney couldn’t get home without them. They were even more one-dimensional than Watney.
• Watney has a sense of humor and voice that really makes his technical log entries more readable, but, at the same time, he’s stranded on Mars. How on Earth (no pun intended) is able to stay so sarcastic and uplifted? The Martian should have been harrowing and gritty, but honestly it barely scraped the surface of human emotion, and all the sarcasm started to really get on my nerves.
• In his last entry, Watney tries to be sentimental and reflective, but he isn’t really able to pull it off. It sounds so half-hearted. There’s so much that he could have said and so much that he could (or, arguable, should) have felt.
• The writing itself just isn’t great.

And, of course, the movie just came out. I honestly don’t have much interest in seeing it, but I might anyway. It could surprise me.

Overall

Are people afraid of inaccurate science fiction?

In my opinion, the only thing this book stands on, and the only thing that makes it unique is its accuracy, which is something that’s nice, but not something I actually care about, but it’s somehow ended up being The Martian’s claim to fame.

And it’s not enough. The book tries to stand on it, and, in my opinion, just ends up failing and falling.

However, the thing that astounds me the most is that this novel just has no emotional depth whatsoever. I can’t believe I spent $15 on it. It’s probably different, though, for people who are scientists and do know a lot about this stuff. They probably think that it’s great that it was so accurate, and don’t care about how shallow it was and don’t care that it doesn’t have heart or meaning.

I don’t make a habit of reading a lot of books I don’t think I’ll like, and a lot of the books I read, I do end up enjoying. This is the first book I’ve read in a while that I just didn’t like. But I really wanted to. I’m glad I’m done with it, though. I can finally get back to reading things I enjoy.

4/10 – I found it shallow and boring and a waste of a good premise. Weir is a decent technical writer, but with The Martian, he hasn’t convinced me that he’s actually a novelist. Apparently he’s working on a second book, though, one involving aliens, and in all likelihood, I’ll check it out, just because I love aliens (but I don’t have high hopes for it).

Blue Velvet

Blue Velvet

A few months ago, I went out to dinner with my parents, and we got to talking about Twin Peaks (which I haven’t seen, but am hoping to watch soon), and that led us into talking about David Lynch’s films. My mom said she enjoyed Twin Peaks, but that his movies were just too weird. This interested me immediately – I like weird. So I put Blue Velvet and Eraserhead in the back of my mind to watch over the summer, but months passed and I never got around to watching either. However, last week I had some free time in the afternoon and I figured what better way to spend it than watching a movie.

Blue Velvet focuses on Jeffrey as one day he returns to his hometown of Lumberton to visit his father in the hospital, fining a human ear on his way there. Intrigued by his finding, Jeffrey decides to do some investigating for himself, helped by Sandy, a detectives daughter, and his sleuthing leads him to the nightclub singer Dorothy.

The Good

• The soundtrack was great. It’s jazzy, it’s eerie, and it quotes Shostakovich’s 15th symphony, and, as a good soundtrack should, really helps set the tone and adds to the movie.
• Interesting plot! This movie can be looked at on all kinds of symbolic levels, but even if you don’t piece together all the symbolism and whatnot, it’s still an interesting movie on the surface.
• I loved the noir feeling of it. The whole film has a very distinct atmosphere, and I feel like the soundtrack really helped with this, as well as the cinematography (which was also one of the very strong points of the film).
• There are a lot of really interesting ways to interpret this movie along with all kinds of symbols and motifs. I won’t get into it, but even a glance at the film’s wikipedia page says a lot. However, even without all kinds of analysis, Blue Velvet is still an interesting films that works independently of all of this, but these were all things that made me even more interested in it.

The Bad

• The movie is kind of on the long side at two hours, and there were moments where I felt like it dragged. I could have lived if it were ten minutes shorter.
• Blue Velvet has been attacked by some critics for its misogyny, and I’d like to go off on a slight tangent to speak on that.
  • The film offers two types of female characters: the sexualized, dark masochistic Dorothy and the virginal, pure Sandy. Both these women are treated pretty poorly by the male characters – especially Dorothy.
  • Are the characters misogynistic? Undoubtably. If you watch the film it’s hard to miss. You’d have to be watching it muted with your eyes closed (which is basically the same as not watching it).
  • Whether or not any of this is moral, so to speak, it raises interesting questions. Does writing misogynistic characters make you a misogynist yourself? To what end are the characters misogynistic? Does their misogyny serve some greater, thematic purpose? And does the misogyny of the characters invalidate the movie? This is supposed to be a review, and not a feminist analysis, and I’m trying to avoid spoilers, so I’m just going to leave this open-ended.
  • Here’s an interesting article that touches a little bit on this misogyny, but is also an overall interesting read (warning: contains spoilers for the movie and for Hamlet). Here’s another interesting discussion of the movie that touches on misogyny. Here’s one that ties the movie in with the Oedipal complex. Again, be weary of spoilers in these.
  • And, of course, if you have anything to add, feel free to leave a comment.

Overall

Blue Velvet is such an artistic film, but it wouldn’t be the first one in the world to fall prey to its own pervasive misogyny. I think that the only thing that could save Blue Velvet from its misogyny is to not let it get away with it. It’s a misogynistic film surrounding misogynistic characters. It’s as simple as that, and it’s important to acknowledge. Am I a bad person for thinking that despite its flaws, this is still a pretty good movie? I don’t know.

Blue Velvet raises a lot of good questions that it probably didn’t intend to, which brings me to the one I think is most important: does the misogyny of the characters invalidate the movie? In this case, for now, I’m going to go with no, but I can’t say I’d never change my mind.

8/10 – Interesting and dark with an evocative atmosphere, Blue Velvet also gives watchers a lot to think about.

Broken Monsters by Lauren Beukes

Broken Monsters

Another book by Lauren Beukes (The Shining Girls) has been sitting on my bookshelf for well over a year, unread, but when I saw Broken Monsters in Barnes and Noble, I was intrigued. I had to grab it. Throughout the review I refer to Broken Monsters as a mystery novel, because that’s what it seems like it should be judging from the premise: a detective protagonist, a body is found that’s half boy, half deer, and more bodies continue to be found. However, though the murder is what’s at the center of the plot and what drives the novel, there’s a lot more to it.

The Good

• The premise isn’t the most original (body is found, body count rises, stakes are high, the killer must be found…), but Beukes manages to make her novel transcend this archetype with everything she does so well.
• Good characters! The characters really added a lot to this novel, they are all somehow tied to the murder or murderer, but all in very different ways, and once all their stories start to converge, it’s just really amazing.
• It touches on some really important issues, even if just briefly and on the surface – like pedophilia, sexual assault and bullying, and more. It has a lot of interesting points to offer.
• The ending blew my mind, I’m actually still trying to wrap my mind around it. It didn’t end the way most mystery novels do, where the Bad Guy gets caught and put away or killed and everyone tries to move on from the horror, there was an extra twist. It was something I’d never seen in a mystery novel before, and I can’t get much more specific without giving it away.
• Also – the Bad Guy was really well written. Beukes brings you right into the killer’s mind, and she really pulls it off.
• It’s set in Detroit, and Beukes really brings the city to life and makes the most out of the setting.
• A wonderful mesh of genres: mystery, supernatural, and thriller.

The Bad

• A lot of characters are introduced early on, and it’s hard to see how they pertain to the plot, and it just moves a little slow (but it all comes together nicely at the end and is 100% worth it).
• It wasn’t scary? Stephen King called it “scary as hell and hypnotic,” and I didn’t even flinch once. It certainly had its disturbing moments, but wasn’t nearly as twisted and messed up as I anticipated, but that didn’t take away from it at all. I just felt misled. I would agree that is was hypnotic, though.
• It was clearly plot-driven, and not character-driven for the most part, which isn’t a bad thing, but I feel like it resulted in the characters feeling a little thin at times. They were interesting and diverse, but didn’t seem fully fleshed out, and I think that’s just because the focus of the novel wasn’t really on who the characters were.

Overall

Broken Monsters has a lot more to offer than most mystery novels, especially with the characters and storylines all coming together. It was mostly driven by the plot (which was great – I loved it), but I feel like there were some moments where that wasn’t enough to keep me reading, but the writing was clear and interesting, and getting through these lulls didn’t feel tedious.

8.5/10 – Not a book I’ll be forgetting, and probably one I’ll be recommending for a long time. Also, now I’m even more excited to read The Shining Girls.

Zella Day, Kicker

Kicker

I first heard of Zella Day when she released her self-titled EP earlier this year, and really enjoyed it. When Kicker came out, I listed to samples of some of the songs on iTunes, but in the end decided not to buy it – what I had heard from it did little to indicate that it was any more than another album by a pop singer that would eventually blend into all the others, and my life just got busy and I forgot about it, until recently.

Track by Track

I. Jerome – This one grew on me, it really did! I like the opening and the chorus a lot. Day starts off the album with really strong vocals on this one. It has a darker edge than all of the songs on her EP.
II. High – I’m not a huge fan of the way this one starts, but once it gets past the first chorus, I’m into it. Another slightly darker one. Overall I didn’t think it was too memorable, just a nice song that blends in with the rest of the album.
III. Ace of Hearts – This might actually be one of my favorite songs from Kicker. I really like the lyrics, my favorite lines being: “I get the feeling that I’m giving up on something I love too much,” and “we shouldn’t have to try so hard.” Also I really like the melodies in both the vocals and instrumentals.
IV. 1965 – This was one of my favorite songs (second to “Compass”) before Kicker came out. I love the lush, open sound of the chorus with the strings. I liked a lot of the lyrics including: “I never had nobody hold me like I’m glass,” and “cut like diamonds we were made to last.” It’s still one of my favorites from her.
V. East of Eden – This was the first song of hers I ever heard, and I liked it enough to check out the rest of her music. What really captured me was the unique sound of this song, it gets you from the opening, and then there are Day’s strong vocals and the catchy chorus.
VI. Hypnotic – I really the the verses in this song. Overall it’s kind of like “High” in that it’s a good song but it just does nothing to stand out from the rest.
VII. Mustang Kids – I feel like stylistically this one stands out from the rest of the album, no doubt partly because of Baby E who is featured on it and its more upbeat and aggressive than most of the songs. I really like the variety that Baby E brings, and I really like the lyrics in his part and the way they flow together, my favorite line being: “the fact that I’m alive is why I still believe in miracles.” The first time I heard this song, I didn’t like it much, but it definitely grew on me.
VIII. The Outlaw Josey Wales – A contrast from “Mustang Kids,” more calm and melancholy, but the pace picks up. I didn’t understand the lyrics (but it’s probably because I didn’t see the movie…). I really like the horn instrumental in the middle, I feel like it really adds a different tone.
IX. Jameson – This song certainly offers a different tone to the album, but I’m not convinced it’s a good one. It’s calm and acoustic and, with the lyrics, comes off as pretty cliche. Day substitutes her powerful vocals for a more relaxed, vulnerable sound. The guitar part is really nice, though and it goes well which the vocals and the song has a generally nice sound. I did find the line “you want me, but treat me like you don’t” really interesting though.
X. Shadow Preachers – A return to the a more lush, electronic sound, “Shadow Preachers,” is full of emotion. The lyrics in the first verse fell really raw, and are some of my favorites on the album: “You got those scissors from the drawer. You never dug so deep before. If I stop trying, we start dying. You’re cutting me out, baby who you fighting?”
XI. Sweet Ophelia – I like this song, but I feel like it doesn’t really stand out. It has good lyrics, but doesn’t really add much to the album that isn’t already there.
XII. Compass – Before Kicker came out, this was my favorite song, and it still maybe. I like the piano in the beginning; I think it really sets a nice tone for the song, and of course, Day’s vocals really soar. It is a change of pace from the rest of the album, calm like “Jameson,” but lush and open like “1965” in many ways. I think it’s a great way for the album to end. Like “Jameson,” also, the lyrics are slightly cliche, but I don’t care, the rest of the song more than makes up for it and adds a certain sincerity.

Overall

Day has a powerful voice, and though some of her songs and lyrics do give into cliches and blend together, there also a lot of interesting moments. Kicker offers more variety than her EP did, there are a lot of songs that offer a darker tone, and the acoustic “Jameson.” However, even though Kicker is full of really solid, catchy, and even powerful songs at times, it overall doesn’t do anything with the indie pop/alternative genre that hasn’t been heard before. This album’s greatest asset is Day’s unique voice that always carries the songs.

7.5/10 – A solid debut, and I honestly enjoyed it a lot. I am incredibly excited to see what Day comes out with next, and really think she has a lot of potential. Kicker isn’t revolutionary, it doesn’t redefine a genre, but it doesn’t have to.