Music Review: Nellie McKay - Pretty Little Head

There's a lotta things that I'm proud of in this world
I got a pinch of Shirley Chisholm and a sprinkle of 'That Girl.'
(“Mama & Me,” Pretty Little Head)

For sheer out-of-the gate gamut running, Get Away From Me, Nellie McKay’s dazzling and dizzying 2004 debut, displayed kaleidoscopic jazz-flavored pop smarts and well-wielded wit and wordplay embracing everything from cabaret, torch, biting hip-hop, and Doris Day-style dewy-eyed songcraft with a pinch of swing and a sprinkle of insincerity.

About all that didn’t get a try-out was yodeling, but McKay makes up for that oversight on her otherwise more uniform and long-delayed Pretty Little Head, which she ended up producing herself after a protracted dispute over direction and CD length led to Columbia letting her go. Releasing Pretty Little Head on her own Hungry Mouse label, a headstrong McKay showcases over two CDs 23 songs that, notwithstanding some diminishing returns, still put across an array of the expected eccentricities, self-effacing and acerbic quirks and vulnerabilities, and cause-related commentary.

But this time around, McKay, putting the first album’s precociousness behind her (when she was 19, or 21, depending on which conflicting facts you have at hand), has toned down the frenetic pace and constant pretty-little-head worry to an extent. Despite occasions in which someone is “coursing through my veins / Pulsing every pound / Panic on parade” (“I Am Nothing”), McKay realizes that she’s “supposed to have a laugh / And have a lot to say.” There's no cause for alarm, and after all, she sings languidly, “You’ve got a long and lazy river to your soul” (“Long and Lazy River”).

That may not be true for everyone, as the long and lazy river becomes at times a shallow tributary in which you’ll run aground. In the scathing “There You Are In Me,” McKay berates the “Selfish, stupid, so self-serious”:

Every single thing will only bring another sad solution
Every single hurt will only curse another substitution
Everyone you meet secures a wretched seat within your memory
Wipe their filthy feet upon the yearning of your soul
There you are in me...

The activist spirit within McKay escapes the trappings of sloganeering heavy-handedness, whether or not you agree with her stances, by being conveyed in oblique language and subtle gradations. Satiric jabs and gentle sarcasm marks the salute to gay marriage in “Cupcake,” while the acidic incisiveness in “The Big One” addresses commercialism and tenant’s rights with the help of some traces of hip-hop vocalizing.

Article Author: Gordon Hauptfleisch

Gordon Hauptfleisch is a Blogcritics Books Editor, freelance writer, and book reviewer for San Diego Union Tribune Books (R.I.P.). For many years he worked in and managed bookstores and record stores, and most recently was purchasing manager for San Diego Technical Books. …

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