Review Summary: Gentle, and a little bit cynical
The album ‘Feel Feelings’ is the third album from French singer Soko.
This album is immediately gentle, full of colourful tones, off-hand and while generally falling under the banner of folk-psych, also incorporates soft-punk and soft-soul. The glossy, colourful sheen is contrasted against a cynical, borderline despondent persona.
The lyrical content of Soko’s ‘Feel Feelings’ is very much personal and brutally honest.
Her ability to make the listener feel as though she is sitting right next to you, opening up her inner-most thoughts (ironic given that she speaks the words ‘you begged me, to know my inner secrets’). Indeed her ability to wear her insides on the outside, and to express them with brutally honesty and acceptance, are better than most other female singers who exist in the same musical territory - in short, she has a blunt way with words that get straight to the point.
Delivered in her unbelievably low-brow vocal style her angry lyrics pack more punch - her choice of words being more important than the way they’re expressed. When the lyrics ‘Don’t you tell me to smile now, with all my teeth, for your picture now’ are delivered in her dry, throaty spoken vocals, they carry so much more weight. Again, on ‘Quiet Storm’ she very casually delivers the lines ‘I recommend you make amends, before my very eyes’ and your left thinking “yeah... I’d never try and cross someone like that.”
So, even though her lyrics often seem rooted in pointless teen-angst, with lines like ‘I was never the pretty one,
I was always the sad one, but I’ll be just fine if I’ve got my red shoes on’ and ‘I’ve never been anyone’s favourite person’ and it would be too easy to recall and class Soko with many other participants in the whole ‘alternative’ scene. However, this girl is far more talented, at least in her lyrical expression and makes the disappointments of life interesting and heartfelt. The issues that dominate teenage angst don’t really go away. There’s disappointment in life for young adults, middle aged people and even old people. Different people deal with these matters in different ways, and Soko deals with it head on, airing all of the dirty laundry.
The music is meant as an accompaniment to her personal stories. She embraces her femininity with incredibly soft music with often surreal soundscapes that sit well in the background. At first her vocals seem too soft, so you literally have to turn up the volume to hear her... but then you hear it all, how the music does a lot of the talking. Again I refer to that lyric about ‘I was never the pretty one’ from above. This line is delivered in a flat, emotionless tone, but when she delivers it the background music takes a more melancholy feel, as if highlighting and emphasising the pain of her subject matter. If there are hundreds of alternative singers out there writing about being ugly and unloved, Soko does it better and makes it feel more meaningful.
When the volume is turned up, you will feel the full depth of emotions on songs like ‘Don’t tell me to smile’ ‘Being sad is not a crime’ ‘Let me adore you’ ‘Looking for love’ - all very good songs with well-crafted melodies.
The problem I have with Soko is her heavy vocal affectations. I think it’s great she explores all the possibilities of her voice, but her constantly eccentric singing doesn’t add to the music. On the opening ‘Are you a magician’ she spoils what is probably the best song here. When she sings more naturally in the chorus of ‘Looking for love’ the results are spectacular. If only she would sing more straightforward more often. When it doesn’t work, the singing sounds like the bad version of ‘pillow-talk’ - not the exciting “Guess where this is going to go” version - the wake up at 1 am in the morning and mumble with a dry throat to your significant other that you’re too tired to get up but you really need to use the bathroom version. In short, Soko’s continual use of throaty, low-key vocals doesn’t always work.
As it is, we are left with beautiful songwriting that suffers from vocals that try too hard to fit into a pre-conceives notion of how ‘alternative’ vocals should sound. It’s a highly recommended album for people who like soft alternative music with low-key vocals.
