By any measures of competent record-making and simple good taste, Nelly Furtado’s music should clear the room. On Folklore, as on her 2000 debut, Whoa, Nelly!, she and her producers don’t hesitate to utilize whatever instruments or musicians happen to be lying around. On Folklore’s typically twitching opening cut, “One-Trick Pony,” a banjo, the Kronos Quartet, and a clipped hip-hop beat intermingle. Elsewhere on the album, vibes, cathedral organs, bossa nova guitar, and even more banjo collide with DJ scratches and Portuguese raps. Add in Furtado’s voice, which swerves from an appealing, feathery girlishness to a harsh nasality, and Folklore should have been a mess.

But it isn’t, and for that we can thank the enthusiasm and creativity that Furtado and her primary collaborator, the production team Track & Field, bring to it. Folklore is about the joy of making something new out of random elements, and few other albums this year have captured that pleasure as well as this one does. Incorporating snap-crackle rhythms and an imaginative juxtaposition of instruments, tracks like “The Grass Is Green” and “Picture Perfect” sparkle. Build on a foundation of dark, hard beats, “Explode” — a solemn account of troubled teen girls that reads like Furtado’s blatant attempt to be taken seriously–truly does explode into a hopeful, euphoric chorus. “Try” is one of several ballads that manage to be refined without being precious.

It helps, though, to tune out many of Furtado’s words. Whoa’s left field left-field success appears to have played with her head, making her not a little self-righteous and defensive. The droning single “Powerless (Say What You Want)” includes a denunciation of the media for misrepresenting her background (”paint my face in your magazines…shove away my ethnicity”). She’s also fond of inane lines like “I rock these bare feet like no one else can.” But even as Furtado do strains the appropriate words with which to express herself, her exultant music goes on its merry, multicultural way.

A- -David Browne

“On Folklore, Portuguese princess Nelly Furtado explores the eclectic side of pop with a fusion of her roots and funky beats.”

On Folklore, Portuguese princess Nelly Furtado explores the eclectic side of pop with a fusion of her roots and funky beats. The follow up to her breakout debut disc Whoa Nelly! proves to be a surprise twist in the artist’s repertoire.

Few pop albums offer up anything the general public can’t already feel in their sugared mouth. There’s a bitter aftertaste that comes after syrupy sweet formula hits, and Furtado’s disc takes the familiar and adds her trademark Latin flare to it. And by Latin we’re not talking Ricky Martin and J-Lo here. We’re talking the soundtrack to street markets in South America. We’re talking the sonic landscape of a countryside romp through countries afar.

Single “Powerless” grooves with dizzying instrumentation and catchy hooks. The annoying “Fresh off the Boat” is still a more interesting listen than Hilary Duff’s existence, while “Picture Perfect” reeks of blatant optimism and distant psychedelic nostalgia. Gently adorned with acoustic guitar and meandering vocals, Nelly comes off as Portugal’s own Michelle Branch on the track.

Comparisons to one of pop’s only other redeeming facets aren’t unwarranted as the acoustic guitar shows it’s gleaming eye more than a few times on the disc. “Saturdays” finds Nelly cracking up at giggles provided by her back-up vocalists. “Try” is another largely acoustic track, featuring Nelly’s penchant for impeccable production as electro-blips rain down over the verses.

The vocal melodies scream Madonna at times while other times brush up against Branch. Folklore is a playful mix of pop history, topped off with a bow of mysticism and originality. There’s a lot of the same on Folklore and just as much new. And while it may not change sonic history, it should hold a cherished position in mainstream fan’s collections everywhere. Let’s face it folks, if all pop music were this well thought out we’d never have to suffer through a Hanson revival. Few things would make the world a happier place.

Author: Peter Menocal

Source

Don’t look now, but the Canadians are coming — again. After a timeout for motherhood, Vancouver chanteuse Sarah McLachlan is back in action, and rumours are flying that Ontario’s hottest musical export, Avril Lavigne, is gearing up for Round 2.

And now comes Nelly Furtado, the British Columbia-born singer-songwriter whose Grammy-certified debut, “Whoa, Nelly!,” racked up multi-platinum sales, mainly on the strength of “I’m Like a Bird,” the so-catchy-it’s-annoying little ditty that lodged itself in the Top 10 back in 2001.

On her new disc, “Folklore,” Furtado ups the ante considerably, spitting out the tasty ear candy of her debut and unwrapping a percussive and eclectic array of tunes powered variously by organ (”Childhood Dreams” ), hotshot banjo-picking (”One-Trick Pony,” “Forca” ), and plenty of state-of-the-art turntable scratching (”Try,” “Island of Wonder” ). Luminaries such as the Kronos Quartet and Bela Fleck turn up too, giving the proceedings an air of arty, world-pop savoir-faire.

For better or worse, just about everything on “Folklore” has been meticulously groomed for radio by Furtado and Track and Field, the dynamic production duo that also oversaw “Whoa, Nelly!”

But where that charming-but-slight disc made it easy to think that Furtado was just a smarter-than-average pop tart, “Folklore” makes you think again. Ambitious, savvy and intricately crafted, the new disc finds Furtado far north of a sophomore slump.

Source: Washington Post

Furtado quietly gives birth to a baby and a CD
More confident in her voice, folk lyrics inspire disc

There are basically two ways of dealing with a celebrity pregnancy.

One — we’ll call it the Céline Dion Method — involves an endless, self-absorbed preamble, a final nine months of womanly melodrama and the assumption that you are the first and most important human being ever to experience the miracle of motherhood.

The other, more tasteful way is to quietly slip the pregnancy by the cameras and the gossip columnists and concentrate fully on preparing for childbirth and it’s necessarily life-altering aftermath. Oh, and if you’re Nelly Furtado, you dip into the studio to write and record an entire new album in the middle of it all.

“It was challenging, I have to admit,” says the sweet-natured Furtado, 24, of the hush-hush build-up to the birth of her daughter, Nevis, on 20th Sept 2003. “But I’m really glad I did it because it’s so special when nobody knows and it’s just between you and your partner and the baby. You can at least give the baby nine months of privacy, because everybody’s gonna find out about it once she’s born.”

Furtado’s unwillingness to milk headlines out of becoming a mama is particularly commendable at this juncture in her career, as she unveils her first record in three years with Folklore.

As sophomore albums go, it will no doubt be watched, and judged, more closely than most since it’s predecessor, Whoa, Nelly!, sold more than six million copies worldwide and turned the Victoria, B.C., native and proud Portuguese Canadian into one of the world’s most visible emergent pop stars.

Almost overnight, Furtado went from demo-ing tracks in an attic at Queen and Broadview to touring the world for two years, trading rhymes with Missy Elliott and Timbaland and having her singing style spoofed simultaneously on Saturday Night Live and Mad TV.

It was a fun ride, but one that left her exhausted, miffed at being mislabelled a bubbly pop ingénue and unsure whether she wanted to plunge back into the whirlwind again at all.

“There are things I don’t even remember doing,” says Furtado. “People will say: `Remember the Italian TV show with that big car and the clown?’ And I’ll be, like: `What are you talking about?’ You fly in and out and you don’t even remember doing those things. You see a picture and go `Where the heck was that?’ It was very fast.” She laughs and feigns a furrowed brow. “Very soul-crushing …

“At one point, I didn’t even really want to do another album. I was kind of jaded about the business, just because you put so much in and when you’re not understood, you go through these cynical phases. Everyone goes through those cynical phases.”

“I think I was already pregnant at that point. I was thinking I wanted to go back to school and learn classical guitar and start up my writing career. I didn’t really feel like writing. Nothing was inspiring me in that way.”

As it turns out, however, Folklore came about through anything but an agonising struggle.

Once Furtado stopped fretting over “the pressure to be different” and flew down to Los Angeles in May to reunite with Track & Field — the Toronto production team of former Philosopher Kings Gerald Eaton and Brian West that worked with her on Whoa, Nelly! — the new record came together spontaneously and wound up being “written, mixed and mastered in 12 weeks.”

“We have a genuine friendship, and we knew each other when we were just cutting a demo in Brian’s attic studio at Queen and Broadview at his apartment. By Jilly’s,” giggles Furtado.

“When I hooked up with them again, it was like magic. It was so cool. And the fact that I was pregnant was great, because music’s just an afterthought when you’re pregnant. You’re so preoccupied with your physical and emotional changes that music is a great release.

“It comes very naturally and easily and you’re in a great emotional state. Plus, when you’re pregnant, you like to sit and eat and in the studio, you sit and food is brought to you. There’s no better place for a pregnant woman.”

Lyrically thoughtful and confident in it’s anything-goes instrumental experimentation, Folklore is, by Furtado’s own admission, considerably “less effervescent” than her debut and bravely devoid of an obvious sequel to “I’m Like A Bird.”

Breakbeats mingle with banjos and acoustic guitars and hints of contemplative Portuguese fado music in songs — some inspired by Furtado’s trips to the Azores and her parents’ old photo albums — themed around idealism, the “immigrant dream” and the passing of youthful exuberance.

Guests, revealingly, include the Kronos Quartet, Brazilian singer Caetano Veloso and banjo virtuoso Bela Fleck.

“I thought it would be cool to use the lyrical depth of folk music, but pitch it in a way that’s still modern,” says Furtado.

“Maybe I had kind of a complex on the first record where I had to run around and show everybody everything I could do. And on this album, I’ve kinda chilled out.

“It’s definitely more confident. I’m more comfortable with my voice. You see more range in my vocals — you can sing a lot lower when you’re pregnant because your diaphragm drops. Gerald says I should have a baby for each record …

“Before, I thought because I was young it would be fun to tour a `fun’ record. And I did it, to the extreme. I had the most fun, Technicolour live show that I could have.

“And this time around, I didn’t want to do that. I wanted to make a record that was more about the music and not about the image and all that stuff,” she says.

“People might be surprised that I don’t always have a smile on my face, but I’m just a normal human being.”

Source: Toronto Star

Pop radio is so appalling that even a modet charmer like Nelly furtado’s “I’m like a bird” make you kneel ini gratitude. her slurpy, slighty nasal tomboy flow suggested what missy or gwen’s often does: than an honest oddball had found herself in a hit song and decided to make it interesting. while it won her a grammy, “bird” was actually one of the less interesting songs on 2000’s multiplatinum whoa, nelly!, a debut that found the 21-year-old skipping through r&b and pop playgrounds spangled with unusual flavours-samples from south african minimalist composers, samba grooves, etc. it was glossy but fresh, and if it weren’t for that darned st. louis rapper, she’d be the most famous mono-monikered global-pop phenom since pele. the question, for a singer mixing it up with timbaland and paul oakenfold but also getting props from easy-listening elders at vh1, was: where to next? folklore finds yet another pop kid struggling to grow up. furtado is still working with producers track & field (gerald eaton and brian west), whose rare-groove-schooled arrangements made whoa, nelly! sparkle. they’ve got resources now-instead of sampling kronos quartet, they can just hire them, along with other npr hipsters like banjo-fusionist bela fleck. and folklore’s nicely realised conceit, involving indentity and heritage, lets the multiculti canadian furtado get her portuguese on. “forca” (loosely translated: “kick ass”) has a chorus so catchy you hardly realise it’s not english; “island of wonder” is an elegant duet with brazilian national tresure caetano veloso. but while the vocals and arrangements are more ambitious and arguably better, there’s less free play, less of the goofiness and kewpie-dancehall scatting that defined her. you get a little on “fresh off the boat,” an export-ready immigrant anthem. but the voice on the power ballad “try” could be almost any lilith fair lassie. furtado’s certainly self-aware, and she’s got the defensive, stardom-critiquing sophmore songs-”one-trick pony,” “powerless (say what you want)”-to prove it. but perhaps the lady doth protest too much. fame is what you do with it, and fun is the best revenge.

Will Hermes

Grade: B

Country singer Carolyn Dawn Johnson.
TORONTO - Avril Lavigne, Sam Roberts, Chad Kroeger and Carolyn Dawn Johnson - and the songwriters who helped them pen their hits - were honoured at the 14th annual SOCAN Awards Monday.

The Society of Composers, Authors and Music Publishers of Canada present the awards, which recognise the songwriters, composers, lyricists and publishers whose work received the most domestic radio, film and TV airplay during the previous year.

Tom Cochrane received the National Achievement Award for his successful career.

“Without SOCAN collecting royalties, we’d have to have other jobs,” Cochrane said before the gala event at the Art Gallery of Ontario.

“I’m just lucky to have made a living playing the kind of music I want to play and having enough hits to maintain that and be able to continue doing that.”

Pop music winners included Lavigne’s Complicated, Celine Dion’s A New Day Has Come, and Brother Down by Sam Roberts.

Johnson’s You Are, Kenny Chesney’s Young, and I’d Never Walk Away, by the Ennis Sisters were the country songs honoured.

Other winners included Hero, written by Nickelback lead singer Chad Kroeger, Shand’s Take a Message, soul singer Glenn Lewis and pop star Nelly Furtado.

Pop star Robert Charlebois was named the Wm. Harold Moon Award recipient and will receive his award at a second ceremony honouring Quebecois musicians. The award recognises artists who have brought Canada international attention through their musical careers.

Whoa, Nelly! She’s back with a disc full of wild Latin rhythms, electronic surges and soothing acoustic sounds…

The sophomore disc is traditionally the one where a newly minted star bitches about success, and Nelly Furtado proves to be no exception when she rants about photo shoots on “Powerless (Say What You Want).” Fortunately, the rest of the music here makes up for her first single’s snippy attitude. Cuts like “One-Trick Pony” and “Fresh off the Boat” offer a euphoric mix of wild Latin rhythms, electronic surges, soothing acoustic sounds and just about every instrument imaginable. The returning production team of Track and Field gives the whole thing a sheen that pops as Furtado muses on childhood memories, love and even martial arts. Too bad Folklore’s so infectious it will–whether Furtado likes it or not–keep the eclectic singer in the public eye for a long time to come.

Grade B