In attempting to navigate my way through the nuances and mysteries of M.I.A.'s new album, I grew concerned that I would be woefully incapable of separating my thoughts on its content from my increasingly scathing view of her character. After all, people don't like M.I.A. anymore. Who was once a mysterious and distanced observer of the absurdity of pop culture in a world that cultivates constant warfare and atrocities, has now been swallowed by the most superficial and banal elements of it. More concerning, she has taken the scope of her world view, formally aimed at intriguing dichotomies and anathemas, and turned it narcissisticly inwards on herself. With all the animosity she has excessively garnered, would any of that negativity unfairly crossover into what should be an unbiased critique of an artistic endeavour? Alas, such fears appear to be moot, as there is plenty to MAYA in it's own right to make you not like it.
To understand just what the hell went wrong, one must first grasp the multiple shifts in focus and theme M.I.A. has made here. Whereas Arular and Kala were both studies in how two vastly disparate cultures- the war torn third world, and the over privileged globalized world- struggle to mesh together, MAYA has a more mono-thematic approach. This is an album about the culture of the internet; just look at the bloody album cover. While this may seem needlessly abstract at first, such a mission translates tangibly into the music and sounds we are subjected to. Rather than represent the wonders of the digital age for all its expansive, creative, and bold contributions it has made to music, she instead chooses the guttural route of engaging in all the unfocused, unstructured, and fractured noise that also creeps through the tubes. As a result, this album is a aural mess. Random sounds, noises, and barely audible distractions are haphazardly and lazily pieced together into a jumbled forest of distortion. There are some interesting and discernible melodies, such as the faux metal hook in “Steppin Up”. But it is buried under, smothered even, by aimless cacophony. “Lovealot” starts off promising as M.I.A. effortlessly shows her talent for stringing together vocal slurs that have an almost onomatopoeic quality (it sounds like a slowed down “XR2”). However it doesn't take her long to get bored and throw away all coherence in favour of clashing factory-house noises that have no business in the song. One wonders if M.I.A. listened to the brilliant “Clavda” by Bjork- a song where a seemingly randomized string of noises are reined in and molded in to an engaging melody. M.I.A. has the random part down, but seriously over estimated her capacity to fulfil the terms of the all important second part.
By crafting an album around internet phraseology and decorum, her sound has lost its softer organic quality, in favour of sterile artificiality. The Bohemian, Rastafarian, and African vibes and instruments are frustratingly absent, only to be replaced by... the sound of visceral banging on metal sheets and buzzing chainsaws? One notable exception is “It Takes a Muscle”; it has a casually laid back Hawaiian quality, and is unsurprisingly her at her most genuine and sincere. It also benefits from a semblance of recognizable pacing, which apparently M.I.A. is too trendy for now. So many songs brazenly insert musical oddities, abruptly segue from one poorly conceived musical experiment to another, or most annoyingly, just stop without warning or reason. Its as if these songs were constructed not only with an elitist disdain for structure, but for what is palatable to the ears.
While this album certainly carries an offensive grating sound it, what is even more distressing is its lyrical content; or lack thereof. M.I.A. showed with previous work, she can craft insightful, thought provoking, and distinctly unique lyrics. She used her position as a person that was acutely aware of the vast differences between the 3rd and 1st world to highlight them. In “M.I.A” She spends one line talking about texting from her Nokia and the next blasting the corruption of the democratic political process. In “Amazon” she relaxingly paints her nails and leisurely sips on a cocktail, only to then be held hostage in the rainforest. By playing these two divergent streams of thought off of each other she provided a n interesting commentary and forced us to look at our lives in a different light, if only for a few seconds. Now, she likes tweeting from her iphone and is pissed that her internet connection is down. She has lost all communion and interest in her roots and has fully embraced the vapid culture she once subtly mocked. How did she go from conveying the absurdity and horrors of torture in songs like “Sunshowers” and “$20” to playing around with Gossip Girl memetics in “XXXO”?
She spends less time on this album trying to describe the things she has seen and learned and the experiences of others; Remember “Mango Pickle Down River”? That was a great story. Growing ever more narcissistic she instead uses the album to talk about herself as much as possible. “Story To Be Told” has her almost complaining that no one is telling her story in a seemingly victimized manner. Didn't she already tell her story in “Paper Planes”? Didn't the New York Times tell her story? And everybody hated it. She named her last two albums after intriguing and mysterious figures that exist either in her memories or her dreams. For christ sakes, she named this album after herself, with a cover that places her vestige at the proverbial center of the goddamn internet. I'm not convinced she is entirely a lost cause however; after all “Born Free” is a good song. That silly video aside (its not a subtle political message, its about as blunt as Mr. Mackey saying “drugs are bad”, m'kay), it shows that she still has a few not entirely self centered things left in her to say. Interestingly, at one point she says, “with a nose to the ground, I found my sound”. When she once again pays attention to the world around her she has something interesting to say. Its no surprise that this song is by far the most energetic song in the collection with an actually interesting fuzzed out base hook.
M.I.A. has taken the credibility and benefit of the doubt that two brilliant prior outings has afforded her and used it to callously test the boundaries of her creative licence and what listeners will blissfully tolerate. In MAYA, she has violently crashed into those boundaries spilling and splaying a torrent of poorly crafted ideas, unfinished thoughts, and an egotistical and impatient demeanour over the shores of a culture she was so sure she understood. I can think of nothing more beneficial for M.I.A. than the backlash that MAYA has already wrought upon her.
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