Published December 3, 2010
Okay, I know how this is gonna sound, but I’m sorry, Friðrik Dór just
isn’t black enough to pull this shit off. I’m sorry, there’s simply no
other word for it… I mean, this is a fine pop album, all things
considered; ‘Leyfðu Mér’ and ‘Hún Er Alveg Með’etta’ are remarkably
strong, and the raucous party stomp of ‘Til Í Allt’ is damn near
irresistible, but there’s just not enough soul, not enough sass and sure
as hell not enough mojo to make this good R&B. The production is
somewhat lacking, as well: excessive compression squeezes what soul
there was to be had out of everything, and the synths are startlingly
uniform, like they just picked one preset and ran with it through the
whole album. Also, you need to know how to sing to do this. I mean,
sure, Friðrik can sing, in a reality TV, SingStar-topscoring
kind-of-way, but to pull this off you need to really, really know how to
sing, sing with a conviction strong enough to bite through the crushing
weight of all that autotune and all that compression… oh well. Who
knows, maybe Friðrik will ‘blacken’ with time… I mean, look at Justin
Timberlake.
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