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Its lengthy incubation process notwithstanding, V.V. Brown's clever debut album, Travelling Like the Light, is as genuine, natural, and deep as mishmash throwback pop can get.
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The British vocalist was pegged as a Beyoncé-style pop/ R&B diva during an abortive mid-decade Los Angeles stint. But escaping that environment allowed her to develop the genre-straddling, retro-modern mélange of Travelling Like the Light, which was released overseas last July.
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The monster-mash hokum can occasionally grate and Brown lacks El Wino's authoritative way with some of the more downtempo material, but there's plenty to suggest she will find a receptive audience for her passionate pop sound, overbearing quirks and all.
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Sometimes she plays the jukebox-sweetheart card too hard, but there's enough modernity here to save Travelling from tipping into mothballed nostalgia.
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The result is a smart, sharp little sugar high, with Brown working her slightly scuffed vocals over zippy, high-gloss arrangements loaded with ear-candy detail.
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V.V. Brown is a prodigious talent who deserves to have a hit record, even if it's just to reward all the hard work that has clearly gone into this debut.
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Q MagazineNothing quite matches that burst of bile ['Crying Blood'], but the title track--choir and all--is heavenly. [Jul 2009, p.118]
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Her music floats exhilaratingly outside of time, blending thumping garage-rock rhythms, doo-wop chords, Spectorian girl-group stylings.
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Brown brings that same sense of fearlessness to her vocal performances. With her slightly raspy timbre, Brown makes for a terrific, swaggering frontwoman....What gets Brown into some trouble is that she often lands on the wrong side of the line that separates homage from rip-off.
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Her enthusiasm immediately leaps from the grooves, but this debut also reveals an emotional and musical range her neo-retro peers lack.
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She’s best in the performative, superficial realm, gleefully donning and discarding personas and influences from song to song. Like any good model, Brown is more conduit than innovator, but she wears her sound well.
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She nimbly skips from 60s girl-group romping (Quick Fix) to Sandie Shaw-inspired melodrama (Back in Time) to pumped-up powerpop (Crying Blood) to rockabilly (LOVE) and sounds entirely assured all the way through.
Awards & Rankings
User score distribution:
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Positive: 14 out of 21
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Mixed: 2 out of 21
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Negative: 5 out of 21
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Dec 7, 2019An underrated masterpiece, i really loved every single second of this album.
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EdPAug 11, 2009