Loving: Speak For Yourself, Imogen Heap
Speak For Yourself
Imogen Heap
Imogen Heap has a voice from another world and a musical soul to match. As half of the electro-pop duo Frou Frou, Imogen gained some exposure when the band’s song “Let Go” from the album Details was included on the Garden State soundtrack and featured in the movie’s closing credits.
Speak For Yourself is Imogen’s second album. Recorded over the space of a year on her own dime, the album drawns from the same musical gene pool that makes Frou Frou soar. Heap has an incredible knack for melody, and spares no hook in building an expansive alt-pop landscape.
The standout track “Hide and Seek” is acapella at its finest; Imogen’s voice burns through the cyborg tones of a double-tracked vocoder, creating a strange angelic warmth out of the mechanical modulations. It’s both odd and completely magnetic, and nearly unfathomable that the song took essentially 10 minutes to lay down.
Mixing it up is the name of the game for this album; case in point: the overdriven wall of sound of “Daylight Robbery” vs. the glossy drum and synth-pop of “I Am In Love With You”; the cinematic burning of “Closing In” vs. the the eerie atmospherics and celestial harp of “Have You Got It In You?”.
At the end of it all is the amazing realization that all of this output came from one person. If you’re a Frou Frou fan (say that 5 times fast), buy this album. It’s a no-brainer, really.