Carly Rae is Undeniably world class
- Vancouver View Magazine
With 2 certified gold singles, 2010 Juno nominations for "Songwriter Of The Year" and "Best New Artist" and winning Socan's "Song Of The Year Award", one gets the sense we're hearing an album that would have shimmered into existence with or without the blue-lit over-exposure native to a nationwide talent contest of Canadian Idol. As Carly points out - without a hint of self-aggrandizement - there can't be too many Idol-survivors whose first album contains nine self-penned originals.
Or for that matter, nine self-penned originals that are quite this good. Jepsen's unfussy debut plays like a middle passage through the stealth pop gloss of Nelly Furtado and the more adult concerns of Feist, whom Carly adores. Her childhood diet of James Taylor, Ella Fitzgerald, and Van Morrison serves her well on Tug Of War, from the smartly built, double-edged title track, to the sense of drama that invigorates the record's centrepiece, "Sweet Talker". Canada has already been exposed to Carly's sensibilities through a nimble, sparkling cover of John Denver's "Sunshine" (providing plenty of musicians with a forehead-slapping "Why didn't I think of that first?" moment), but her intuitive grasp of simplicity as a musical force in and of itself is total, and it informs the entire album. In short, Tug Of War is a million miles away from the bubblegum factory.
In other words, the Idolatory seems almost irrelevant now, when you stack it beside the self-possessed natural, triple-threat beauty, and all-round heart-melter who still cries at concerts because she loves music first and foremost, who found the perfect foil in producer Ryan Stewart, who took aggressive charge of the career she was always built for, and who emerged with an album that vibrates with the possibilities of the long arc ahead.
Tug Of War is no less than the album Carly Rae Jepsen wanted to make. And that's all that need be said in the end. Although she should probably have the last word.
"I want to play good music that lasts a lifetime. You don't need to be known by everybody. You just reach out to the people who feel what you're doing, you know?
Spoken, as somebody once said, like a true musician.
