Matangi

MIA is so assured here... The critical party line is that MIA’s previous effort ///Y/ was an artistic failure. ... Surely those naysayers will declare this a fine return to form.

Matangi is her most exhilarating and mulch-faceted album. [Jan 2014, p.75]

Matangi can be looked at as a return to form, but it's more fitting to think of it as a "getting back on track" kind of record.

Her child-like rhymes may seem like she’s only toying with playground politics but she knows exactly where her strengths are; Matangi is a tribute to those talents and it’s an unmitigated thrill. Dissident, deviant, “mili-tent”; Cookie cutter pop star she is not, but a true great she absolutely is.

At once highly inventive and unabashedly fun, the album showcases the trailblazing pop star at her most expansive thus far. M.I.A. adroitly capitalizes on her established style, embellishing it with moments of genuine intimacy.

M.I.A. never overthrew the prevailing pop order.... With her usual freetrade beats sounding more velvety than spiky, Maya Arulpragasam's fourth album finally makes peace with this. [8 Nov 2013, p.63]

Matangi ends up being worth the wait, which in this case is high praise indeed. [No. 105, p.58]

The snotty attitude of MIA's incendiary globalist skipping rhymes has never been better balanced with first-rate pop hooks. [Jan 2014, p.96]

Though a marginally lesser album than predecessor MAYA, Matangi is nevertheless dynamite.

The qualities that make M.I.A. a tough sell is the same one that fuels her restless, hungry, inspirational music. [Dec 2013, p.100]

Matangi‘s top moments aren’t riddled with thumping bass or explosive mania. They are steady builds, relatively simple and not of a too specific trend moment, plus they have feeling.

All in all, the disses, weird comments, glitchyness, folky bits and ravey big bass — among many other sundry bits and pieces — come together to create something that will make many people dance. This doesn't sound like an album as much as a terrifically curated DJ set—and that's more than okay.

M.I.A.’s most consistent work since her debut. ... Yes, her myriad ideas are still tumultuous, but there’s precious few other musicians out there attempting such an ambitious and impassioned collage of words, rhythms and concepts.

Matangi is the best M.I.A. album since at least Kala.

She’s reminded us exactly why she’s important: she’s a hyper-intuitive artist with a mongrel sensibility who bows to no one.

The middle of Matangi, including the masochistic grind of “Bad Girls” and the hard dancehall influence of “Double Bubble Trouble,” contains uncommonly straightforward songs that would’ve fit easily on Rihanna’s last two albums. M.I.A. doesn’t stint on the bangers, though.

It may not always work, but when it does, M.I.A. can still sound like the most exciting pop star on the planet.

Like its creator, Matangi is flawed, frustrating, and occasionally confusing, but it's also intermittently brilliant and completely unique.

For all its contradictions and eccentricities, Matangi (the title links MIA with her near-namesake deity, a ghetto-dwelling Hindu goddess of music) feels more fully realised than the previous albums.

Like the woman who made it, Matangi is hugely inventive and a bit exhausting: if it's hard to take in anything other than small doses, you can't help but be glad it exists.

M.I.A is a maverick writing this album only for herself and her cause, but still, Matangi is a welcome return to form.

Matangi, her fourth disc as M.I.A., succeeds in recovering lost ground from 2010 slump Maya thanks to the fire in its belly.

Matangi can feel a little trippy-dippy--we miss the “give war a chance” Maya. Still, this is musically monumentally freako.

Within the initial audio assault of "Matangi" lies a fine album, but it's also one that could have done with some pruning, a bit more care taken in the sequencing and perhaps a bit more self-belief.

Matangi is a welcome return to form that consolidates on the agenda set out in MAYA.

Matangi sounds like a mess on first, second and third listen--and it doesn't help that the album's worst missteps, the lumbering Britpop-worthy ballad 'Come Walk With Me' and the squeaky irritant 'aTENTion', weigh down its first half. But when it coheres, it's a thrill.

Poppy but pugnacious, familiar and yet dizzyingly foreign, Matangi is a contrarian work from an artist who lavishes us with liminality, with contradictions.

She shows little need to resolve contradictions or make her dazzling scraps cohere. But the magic is in the frisson.

Matangi again establishes M.I.A. as one of the most fascinating figures in modern music, but the personal voice underlying her material remains aggravatingly half-baked.

Her signature chaotic, frantic kitchen sink of noises permeate every song. There isn't much shift from album to album. She's found what works and she sticks to it.

Matangi is a disappointing record because of how listlessly over and "beyond" everything it is--to the point that it often feels uncharacteristically weary and out of touch.

There's some excellent production work from old M.I.A. hands like Switch and young rap titans like Hit-Boy, and the hazy, hopeful theology of "Y.A.L.A." ("YOLO" for reincarnationists) is a cool premise for an album of post-colonial uplift in the Internet era. It's just a shame that so much of the record feels more like an Assange-style data drop than a pointed, insistent statement.

M.I.A. is good at circumventing dance music clichés, often through sheer polyrhythmic excess; it’s hard to stay still during effusive bangers like Y.A.L.A., Matangi and tribal-trap anthem Warriors. On the flip side, Matangi’s forays into left-field pop (Come Walk With Me, Lights) are blandly saccharine compared with // / Y /’s pure pop moments.

She makes listeners wait for her still-formidable skills with hooks and melodies, displaying them most stunningly on "Bad Girls," a sinewy, menacing track whose origins date back to 2007 sessions with Danja.

The problem is that the record sat on the shelf for so long... that anything that may have once seemed fresh on the record now seems more than a little tired.