Anjulie debut-album review (Nu-Soul)

Anjulie goes boom!

By Marcus Scott

Nu-Soul Magazine

November 20, 2009

Honeycomb-churning contralto-voiced sugar pop chanteuse Anjulie is a harmonious idiosyncrasy to say the least, and with her eponymous debut, she’s got the moxie to be the reigning US Hot Dance Club Play princess. On first listen, this Great White Northern answer to Santigold and Regina Spektor turns a melting pot of sound into a cultural mosaic. From Tango, dark wave bossa nova, world rhythms, hip-hop soul, ‘70s era Philly soul-disco to acid jazz flourishes, contagious neo-soul half-scats, Morricone-esque superfluities, and Sunnyside-up acoustic guitar riffs—Anjulie shows that she is slowly putting her stamp on popular music. With “Rain” and “Addicted2Me” having both been featured on MTV’s famous-for-being-famous mainstay scripted-reality broadcasts “The Hills” and “The City,” this funky mademoiselle is getting eyed by the cool kids.

First single “Boom,” sounds like a 60s Nancy Sinatra-esque vibe that could easily have been a staple on the Kill Bill soundtrack had it debuted a few years prior. Its pseudo-James Bond guitar flare, cabaret sass shimmering in the horns and fire-eater big band sound on the backbeat creates a magic that screams A-list Avalon. “Boom,” a rather haunting stalker-in-the-shadows foxtrot bathtub-surrounded-with-candles serenade, is a finger-snapping fiesta that, upon first listen, sounds like an alien musical oddity on the rise. Anjulie’s daringly dark timbre and use of restraint forces the listener to tune in and sway to the intercontinental rhythms and with the rotation of her video—a Salvador Dali Alice in Wonderland panache—the listener is drawn into a parallel universe of the extraterrestrial…something we haven’t seen in a jazz artist since Herbie Hancock’s Future Shock record.

“Rain,” a sexy recall of the late-90s millennium bubblegum Bad Boy R&B sound pioneered by Blackstreet, TLC and P!nk’s debut that instantly transforms Anjulie from a fizzy-mystic soul chorus girl to urban café torch singer. The stormy weather synth orchestra drum thunderclap backing intro that jumps into a simple acoustic guitar hip-hop melody is refreshing, and with a resemblance to The Score’s “Ready or Not” by rap supergroup The Fugees and a sound that almost rehashes Craig David’s “Walking Away”. Maybe Anjule is on her way to making a name for herself in a time where music is being dominated by glitzy-shiny Lady Gaga and sugary spectacle-stealing Britney Spears upstarts.

From Oaksville, a suburb of Toronto, the young songbird interned at the Metalworks recording studio at 17, where she met Jon Levine, keyboardist of the Canadian R&B hit-makers Philosopher Kings. Born to Guyanese immigrants, this boom box blasting lovechild of Nelly Furtado of Corinne Bailey Rae is a well-read versifier to say the least. The computer pro tools steroid-juiced “Some Dumb Girl,” with her sassy and girlish coos and the 80s Japanese synthpop atmospheric liquid breathing jazz backing, sounds more like a movie soundtrack than a confession of infidelity…and arguably, that is its charm. Unlike her peers, who have out more radio-friendly tunes, Anjulie’s melancholy and chill resonance places her audience in a world best explored lying in a bed reading a book or while the listener is on the road at 4 o’clock in the morning driving on cruise control as the sun begins to rise. Her lyrics, so in tune with rudimentary human emotion, is written in generalities—which can to some critics be an excuse to rid oneself of having to show any “real talent”—but it works because her solid delivery can be understood because everyone understands them. Written as if in conversation, on “Some Dumb Girl,” Anjulie makes a pious protest and she speaks volumes. She follows this up with the psychedelic R&B showstopper made-for-primetime-series-finale “Addicted2Me.” The feisty two-step club-grinder, with its distorted vocal backing and it’s sweat-dripping baseline, she declares “Nobody gotta love like mine,” with a popped-blister vocal roar. Anjulie rips her lover a new one with her confident refrain, and with moxie she is a brazen beauty on the prowl with statements like “’Til your addicted to me like the sand to the sea/And everything that you see is a vision of me/Your addicted to me like a fatal disease/Until your love for me is a love like me.”
The album is a stunning debut from an artist, be it that most won’t appreciate it because of the mellow tinge of the record, but what Anjulie does is create a nexus between genres and kicks down the walls of sound that we segregate in music stores. For Anjulie can’t be boxed in. Listen to “Same Damn Thing,” whose folk rock lyric style sounds like an early Sheryl Crow effort and whose melody sounds like a Vitamin C / Ace of Base amalgamation, with its hotter-than-July 60s-beach-party sound and Anjulie’s saccharine alto. Clearly, Anjulie—still an unknown—could be one of the best talents to come out of the last half of first decade of the 21st century with her soulful blend of sistah-girl swagger and Lolita debutante darling decadence. Probably one of the most dismissed albums this year, this sexy vamp is an artist on the rise.

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