Looking on the cover of Camille’s new album, Music Hole, the thought that clings to me is who or what exactly she is gesturing to with one arm clutching her chest and the other one reaching out.
If you’re not familiar with her then this is the part of the review that brings up the inevitable comparison with Bjork’s a capella masterpiece Medulla. It’s a point Camille must surely be wary of by now but there’s no escaping the similarities between the two. Her last album, Le Fil, caught on outside her native France partially because of it as well as the single "Ta Douleur" was such an irresistible piece of ear candy. Music Hole is sung fully in English so it’s easier to follow, therefore one can truly gauge the effectiveness of her sound. Of course, the novelty of her sound has worn off and critical love being the bitch that it is, reactions to the album will be interesting to say the least.
It’s a point worth making because Camille has chosen to broaden the a capella-meets-rhythm path Le Fil began and this is the most crucial thing to understand about Music Hole. Let’s face it, in a pop age where musicians loathe diverting too far from what has worked (financially) for them before, Camille has pulled quite a coup. The album brilliantly combines the driving forces of continuity and exploration in a way only non-Americans have really managed in the pop landscape in recent times.
Critics demand musicians to unfurl more sonically, even if it’s to delve deeper into a sound they’ve tinkered with before. In such a regard, a musician can prosper or flounder without a critical backlash. That’s the difference between this Camille record and, for example’s sake, Madonna’s disappointing new album Hard Candy. One creates a continued space to expand while the other uses its space to rotate the same underwhelming effect its immediate predecessor had.
Music Hole shows up the lazy and bloated pop ditties that populate a Hard Candy or a E=MC2 and really one can’t view these far more successful artists in the same light. Mariah Carey has always been terrible but when exactly did Madonna lose her creative and sexually-charged urges?
Camille’s creative juices sprint out immediately on opener "Gospel with No Lord". She spurs herself on ("allez Camille Simon allez") amid a multitude of funk grooves that break out into more with each couplet until that final breathy outburst. It’s unclear what exactly the title pigeon-holes but there are enough controversial lines to suggest something wholly subversive (a crack at God, her genetics, et al). It’s a well-crafted oeuvre that continues with the other ten tracks and as they flow smoothly into each other. By then it dawns on you how great a technical album this is.
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