"The ArchAndroid" is curiously schizophrenic and obsessively polished at the same time - it's a big, meaty, unpredictable mess of an album that calls to mind Outkast's "Stankonia" in its arc from track to track, bouncing across styles at a blistering pace (Classical to 40's jazz to 60's pop to R&B and back again), and yet, unlike Outkast's album, each individual track is fiercely controlled, and musically far more refined. Monae's split Android/Human persona is ultimately a good metaphor for the split personality of the music.
Monae is at her best when she embraces that control and puts the (considerable) energy at her disposal behind it. In "Dance or Die" and "Faster" the frenetic pace of the music works well against her exceptionally tight vocal work - in the first track it's a monotone rap laid out as only an android could over techno-cuban rhythms and a Miami Sound Machine-worthy chorus. I love the bass work throughout the album, and particularly on "Dance or Die" - it's intelligent and yet visceral, drawing on latin music to keep the energy alive without dumbing down. The transition from that track into "Faster" is just spectacular; The songs couldn't be more different, with one techno/latin and the next a sped-up 60's pop piece along the lines of "These Boots are Meant for Walkin'", and she does both feels justice.
Monae's vocal talents are undeniable and, to my ear, refreshing. Her voice is exceptionally pure, drawing on those 60's pop influences for a clean sound totally at odds with the excessive-vibrato R&B belting that seems to have become the gold-standard for American female vocalists. It's exceptionally gratifying to hear a truly wonderful singer eschew the cliche'd baroque embellishments and rely on the simple strength of her own voice. You won't hear Mariah/Beyonce/Christina vocals-for-their-own-sake, and it's a relief.
If "The ArchAndroid" has a flaw, it's that it's too much robot, not enough woman. Monae's performance can come off as theatrical - on "Come Alive (War of the Roses)" she sings "That's when I come alive / Like a schizo running wild" in what should be wild abandon, but she still sounds more like an actress playing crazy than a woman losing control. I can't help but wonder if this isn't Big Boi's influence - his work is so tightly wound that it sometimes needs Andre 3000's explosive nature to keep it in balance.
Still, the album is breathtaking in its scope of influences alone and it handles each of them exceptionally well - I would love to hear her tackle slightly more personal subject matter, but oddly enough, after listening through several rounds, I started to feel that the album in its entirety is a sort of self-portrait, expressing exuberant passions and conflicting tensions of control and release that really do say something about Janelle Monae, even if the individual tracks sometimes feel like screens that she hides behind.
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