LAEL SUMMER AT HER PLEASURE ON ‘LIFE IN COLOR’
Published in AXS.com, July 2015
On her most recent album, “Life In Color,” Lael Summer sings about satisfaction, anger, patience and happiness over synth laced garage rock, subtle psychedlia, upbeat R&B, introspective folk and volcanic new wave.
At a glance, you think maybe she’s not ready to commit to any one thing just yet. But the conviction in her honey coated voice tells a different story, especially on the first track’s weirdly compelling ode to obnoxious sorority girl consumerism.
“Nothing Better” starts with a happy drum beat setting a snappy tempo for the sappy words to follow. Reminiscing about “those cold cold nights in New York City” when “your body’s like a dishrag,” Summer comes off like a twenty-something trixie who gets a kick out of loneliness because she’s never really quite experienced it herself. When she advises listeners to “grab a pack of cigarettes” because, if it was her, she would “Sit myself down and light that shit up,” you think: wait a minute. Did she just say shit?
Indeed. The ensuing homage to materialistic privilege — including a “guilty pleasure for fake sugar and coffee” and “French vanilla lattes from a machine” — is a breezy nod to the chic habits of all the good looking young people we love to hate.
Thing is, Summer does not resemble some valley girl with daddy’s credit card. In press photos, the native New Yorker is an exotic beauty with a forlorn look that suggests there’s a lot more on her mind than getting a picture taken. She started singing when she was two years-old and graduated from USC’s Elite Popular Music Program last year.
Her band, which looks a lot more night club than country club, lays down a catchy vintage rock and roll groove underneath her lyrics. The guitar flirts with country psychedelia like Tommy James and the Shondells used to do, the bass and snare play a straight-up one two three four rhythm and the high-notes of a synthesizer float and swoop over the whole thing like an old Cars tune.
Within this comfy soundscape, in response to a smooth chorus that coos “Mmm, there’s nothing better,” Lael justifies her unabashed devotion to cutie pie preferences by declaring, “We all got our fair share of vices so whose to say which ones have got to go and which ones can stay?”
Then, near the two-minute mark, she adapts the grating cadence of a clueless, self-indulgent rich girl and barks “a day at Barnes at Noble in a self-help section.” It’s as stunning and awesome as any line Moon Zappa says on the legendary song, “Valley Girl,” including, “I love going into like clothing stores and stuff.”
Lael also declares that she likes “A catnap with… one on my chest,” in an altogether different but equally annoying vernacular, and you think okay, maybe she’s being sarcastic.
Then she resumes singing, “A first kiss… fingers in my hair” and “A glass of white wine with my friends.”
So, maybe not.
Other highlights on the album include “Wires,” a post-breakup message to a certain “Mr Know It All” with groovy psychedelic Hendrix undertones, and “Dream Machine,” a seductive EDM interpretation of the “knee bone connected to the thigh bone” song over a synthed up bass line oozing onto drums that would fit almost any track from “Soul Mining,” the debut album of 80s post punk pioneer The The.
But it’s the opener, “Nothing Better,” where Lael dangles her shallow pleasures in today’s cesspool of potentially vitriolic pop culture opinionaires, that will make the greatest impact on listeners. She seems aware of the song’s ability to stir up the righteous-minded crowd; but if that happens, the righteous-minded crowd automatically transmogrifies into the feeble brained bootlickers that they strive to ridicule.
Whatever the motivation, Lael probably does not care what I or anyone else thinks: like the song implies, she’s got more important things to worry about.