Aluna Francis and George Reid are fast rising dance duo AlunaGeorge. Pinning them down to one particular genre is not the easiest thing to do but their debut album, Body Music, seems to have alot of clues. Is the album any good? Do AlunaGeorge still make Bass Music? Read on and find out..
For some reason I was expecting an album someway along the lines of Rudimental’s Home – Urban mixed with a dose of Pop. But Body Music seems like the opposite; Pop mixed with a dose of Urban. Take the interestingly titled “Bad Idea” for example. This could hardly be excused as being a typical Pop track but the fact that it is a Pop song is as clear as day. Aluna’s “Doo Pah Doo”’s make it even more apparent.
What AlunaGeorge seem to do is blend a variety of genres with Pop, to make something more interesting than the generic rubbish you’ll hear on daytime radio. “Diver” for instance is a brilliant blend of Pop and RnB and while I am not the greatest lover of Pop the production does enough to keep me engaged until the end.
Although it is not a song that I warmed to immediately, my fondness for “Attracting Flies” has grown. This is far from the best thing that you’ll hear from AlunaGeorge but considering its chart performance, breaking into the UK Top 20 which (far better than AlunaGeorge’s previous singles which couldn’t even manage to break in to the UK Top 40), it definitely did the job commercially.
“Just A Touch” was released in mid 2012 but still sounds as good as it did when it was first released. This is a perfect example of what AlunaGeorge are about. “Just A Touch” sounds even better in the context of this album.
AlunaGeorge’s cover of Montell Jordan’s 90’s classic “This is How We Do It” is brilliant, one listen to their Live Lounge cover or any other of their live renditions of the song will illustrate this. The recorded version that appears on the album however sounds like a Karaoke version of the song and AlunaGeorge are far better than that.
And that is a long running theme with the album, early songs such as “We Are Chosen” showed the duo’s potential to make good music. Unfortunately Body Music is not that and is nowhere near being good. Yes radio programmers will probably love it but that is not what counts when deciding whether a piece of music is good. Body Music does at least have one saving grace and that is track thirteen “Friends To Lovers”. It is a brilliant RnB Slow Jam and is the album’s best song lyrically, emotionally and production wise.
AlunaGeorge are a Pop act, what they do really well is draw upon other genres of music and produce something that is not a typical Pop sound. For that they must be commended because without acts such as them listening to daytime radio would be even more painful. But (thankfully) that is not something that I have to do and the quality of a piece of music cannot be determined purely on that factor. Body Music is not a good album, there are however some good songs and your money would be more wisely spent on those than wasted on the album package because of its lack of consistency.
Rating
Body Music is available to download now on iTunes. You can also stream the album on Spotify.
Previously: Album Review: Kanye West – Yeezus
