Review Summary: Look, no Mastodon guitar solo!
Though I'm sure none of you indie elite need to be reminded, but allow me to assert that Paris Hilton is a piece of ***. It's an obvious statement, sure, but one that is central to wrapping your head around this omnipresent, miasmic phenomenon in our media and celebrity-centric culture. Too often, the question we thinking people - anyone with a high school diploma - ask ourselves is "why?" only to find ourselves helplessly lost, confused, and embittered in the face of ultimate irrationality. What part of human nature allows something like Paris Hilton to happen? Like timeless questions of good vs. evil, order vs. chaos, sanity vs. madness, perhaps the answer is not meant for us; we as mortal human beings wouldn't even be able to handle it, let alone approach comprehending it.
That being said, her album is hella catchy. As a personality, she's much more suited to the setting of an ultra-lightweight pop album than a television show or, God forbid, the written word; a lot of aggravation disappears when you don't actually have to look at her. Even when her personality seeps through, shallow and vapid as it is, it's easy to ignore in the context of fairly well constructed mainstream pop singles. Her voice is breezy and doubtlessly pro-tooled to death; effort never once makes itself apparent, which actually works to the album's favor more than almost anything else. The whole thing sounds like a whim of someone bored enough, rich enough, and with enough free time to actually pull it off. It's music as pure commodity, a middle finger to artistic integrity, and also more enjoyable than many, if not most, labored-over albums by mainstream pop mainstays.
Lyrically, she bounds back and forth between downright annoying narcissism and absurdly unconvincing lovesickness. Not surprisingly, the infectious melodies take precedence over, what I assume to be her lackluster lyrics, and delivery. Like
Mein Kampf, Paris is the sound of someone with an impossibly-skewed worldview trying their best to express and justify themselves given their limited means; Hitler was no writer, Hilton is no singer. Where they both succeed is in the area of charisma; Hilton is just idiotically endearing enough to sell this thing to anyone not taking her seriously, or perhaps taking her too seriously, though she'd probably have a hard time founding an autocratic political party.
All in all, give it a download - like she really needs more of your money - turn off your brain, and be that much closer to understanding an irrational cultural phenomenon besides K. Fed. If nothing else, I could use some props for reviewing an album on Scene Point Blank that isn't hardcore of any sort of drone-metal AND giving it a score that's, for once, thoroughly average.
