Review Summary: Fallenmania, part 8
Fallenmania is my opportunity to indulge in my 2000s-early 2010s nostalgia. It lets me praise Fallen shamelessly, explain which of their imitators did it well or not, look back at some hidden gems and rediscover albums I had overlooked. Kerli’s “Love is Dead” debut album was one of those pleasant surprises.
Kerli is a pop singer, with occasional rock influences, a goth look and angsty, edgy lyrics. Basically, as you can see on her album cover where she’s drawn as a sort of creepy doll, she acts like a cartoon goth girl. You may or may not be into that, but does her music actually work? Well, not every song is equally good, but they show some good ideas, and the good songs work pretty well. For example, “Walking on Air” begins with a bunch of high-pitched “la la la” and a list of things described as creepy, and then, a chorus about how if you believe, I guess, you can actually walk on air… Yeah, that’s what I meant about acting like a cartoon goth girl and how it might be a little annoying if you’re not into that. But I enjoy the song’s catchy beat and slightly trippy feel.
However, that’s not the best trippy song. The songs where she really lets her imagination go wild are the best, like “The Creationist”, thankfully not about creationism but about how she creates her own imaginary world to escape the harshness and dullness of reality, to a catchy and otherworldly mixture of piano melody and pop beat. Or “Creepshow”, a wild and crazy song, with guitars and electronic sounds, all about her strange reality, with lyrics like “I’m from a land called Estonia, nobody knows where it’s at” and “Ice cream mountains”, “Cinnamon houses and licorice flies”.
These are the recurring themes of the album: strange, quirky things and people, and everyday struggles with people thinking you’re weird, or just not being very nice to you. It’s an album for people who feel like they don’t fit in, but are proud of it. She has a great reply to people who always want more and keep taking from her, in the angrier, rock-influenced “I Want Nothing”.
Or, strangely enough, she’ll tell them to hurt her if that’s what they want, like in “Hurt Me”, where I guess she’s trying to be defiant but also rhymes “Floor”, “More” and “Soar”, and chanting it almost too proudly. I’m not really feeling this one, just like “Up Up Up” and those lyrics whose meaning I’m not sure of, something about people going “up up up” and “down down down”. But I like this song’s electro pop beat and violins.
I like how this album is definitely trying to use a sort of quirky, unclassifiable pop sound, with many different influences. Most of the songs are basically pop songs with rather pretty good and creative beats, like “Beautiful Day”, “Strange Boy”, and the others I’ve described, but there are exceptions to that. There are some nice ballads, like “Butterfly Cry”, but mostly “Bulletproof”, her most Evanescence-inspired track. Because of that influence, her singing sounds more dramatic and passionate, and the music has a lot more emotion.
Then, there’s title track, which is really something else. It’s a rock song with a dark, melancholic riff, and a chorus where she sings “Love don’t live here anymore” with so much devastating sadness, with a melody and a voice that sound almost like Björk. I think this song, along with “Creepshow” and “The Creationist”, are the most impressive tracks of the entire album.
“Love is Dead” is her first song I heard, and it told me I had to check her out immediately. Did it live up to my expectations? I think some of her songs are weaker, especially the last ones, or also “Up Up Up” and “Walking on Air”. The album’s dull moments are particularly disappointing considering she’s also capable of making great songs like “Creepshow” and “Love is Dead”. Honestly, an album inspired by Evanescence, Avril Lavigne, Björk and Emilie Autumn should have been better, and shouldn’t feel so contrived. Her whole cartoon goth persona might feel a little forced to some of you, because it feels like you’ve already heard this before. I feel like I’ve already seen other unclassifiable pop artists that try to be have the most interesting sound and be the quirkiest people you’ve ever met. I’ve also already seen other artists with an angsty but friendly persona, “meaningful” lyrics, and a cartoon goth look, that I’m obviously supposed to like because I like other cartoon goth artists.
But whatever I think of Kerli’s weaker songs, or her persona, I didn’t regret listening to this album. The good parts more than make up for the bad ones. They’re a delightful trip through a dark, quirky and endearing mind. It was a fun, enjoyable little album, nothing extraordinary but entertaining. It shows how many different things can be done with a cartoon goth aesthetic that’s slightly derived from Fallen.
