I can remember the first time I was introduced to the artist who called herself Imogen Heap. It was my second day in college, I was learning a new environment and meeting new people with whom I would become the best of friends. A couple of us were in my friend’s dorm picking up some things to go over to watch Dr. Horrible at their friends house. In order to create some ambiance, my friend played the song “Hide and Seek” on her lap top. I remember being caught up in the gorgeous metallic harmonies and lyrics of wrought frustration and thinking, this is me, right here, right now. I thought, never in my life had a musical moment tied in so perfectly with my outside life. I immediately bought the entire album the very next morning.
This is the impact of Imogen. She has the ability to capture the moments in life that symbolize so much, and set them to music that equally shows the exuberance and beauty they have to offer. While other ventures have succeeded in just that, Ellipse should be considered Imogen Heap’s grand opus in life, love, and humor. Try not to feel the force of the world pointing towards your dreams in the soft, synth-layered opener “First Train Home”. Like a beautiful combo of a modern-day Kate Bush and Bjork, she taps in the sound of everyday items like the dripping of a sink (“Wait it Out”) , the sound of an evening fire behind the solo piano (“The Fire”), or the sound of a group of people talking at a party (“Half Life”) while maintaining the integrity of intelligent lyrics.
Take, for example, the most breathtaking track on the album, “Tidal”, in which the lyrics talk of a full moon pulling a tidal wave towards it as a metaphor for how we wish to pull memories towards us in order to keep love close. Layers of strings, guitars, mechanical drums, synthizers, and harmonies color in the lines drawn by the lyrics. Heap has even said in interviews that his was the toughest track to work on, because she felt like the song had to be balanced just right. In the end she did what any artist who cares for her listeners does: she let her listeners decide which ambiance fit the song best.
Even throughout just the listening of her album, we feel her struggle to create magic. From the sexually charged yet simply arranged “Between Sheets”, in which to evade her stress she spends a night with a man, to the comic and ironic “Bad Body Double” in which she pokes fun at an industry obsessed with trying to cure what everyone calls imperfections, and to my personal favorite track on the album called “Earth”, in which she uses only her voice in series of beat-boxing, rhythmic sequences, and harmonies to explain to her listeners the dangers of not treating both one’s well being and the Earth with respect and love.
With an artist like Imogen Heap, I find it difficult to understand the complete garbage that can pass for music on the radio nowadays. With female artists like Miley Cyrus, Taylor Swift, and Katy Perry infesting the female youth with empty songs about boys who don’t love them and why they don’t get what they want, it’s high time an artist like Imogen Heap, whose music is about the inner workings of emotion with the maturity of a woman who has lived through and learned from these experiences, gave young women a role model whose uniqueness and ethereal beauty makes her truly a person to idolize.
So here it is, Ellipse, in my opinion the best new record of 2009.
–Kyle R. Sonnemann
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