All About Lily Chichi

Anglophiles are occasionally good for something:  TMFTML posted twice last week about Lily Allen’s music and, unlike 97% of the stuff that gets hyped across the pond, I like it.

No, wait:  I love it.

Yowza.  It’s what summer should sound like.  Which means that, by the time it finally makes it on to record, it’ll come across like one great big ice-cream-headache of a CD.

I’ll still be first in line to buy it.

Allen’s twirling ‘round in a poppyfield of little red flags.  She’s the daughter of Brit actor/soccer anthem-composer/ New Order-collaborator Keith Allen.  She’s being called “a female Streets” or a more-competent Lady Sovereign.  She admits to loving ska.  She’s just about to turn 21 and she’s never played a gig (her first is this week).  And she’s the new myspace postergirl.

But she makes me smile.  And that’s what counts.

The white-Britrap musical comparisons are lazy.  Allen’s singing, not MC’ing – she doesn’t talk any more than the sassiest girl groups did, and no matter how quick her tongue gets it never once feels like she’s trying to pound a square line into a round phrase.  Her voice soars, and lilts, and rambles effortlessly through Caribbean-tinged early-sixties-style pop songs, disarming you while a Nellie McKay-like precociousness and her ruff-accent force double-takes.

There’s only a single single out in the U.K.  So where can you hear her, over here?

There are four songs streaming on her myspace.  Her big Brit radio hit, “LDN,” is Calypso King quality, a buoyant and brash ode to her hometown.  Both it and the superior shop-pop of “Everything is Wonderful” alternate between cookie’s-crumbled verses and blissful choruses (“Sun is in the sky, oh why oh why would I wanna be anywhere else?” in the former, “I’m having the time of my life” in the latter).  The no-you-can’t-have-my-number number “Knock ‘em Out” invites bad boxing metaphors; it bobs, weaves, zings.  “Little things” is the most personal of the quartet, but also the weakest, musically:  A “Karma Police” intro devolves into Didoacticism.

You’d expect that (Arctic Monkeys) mp3s would have leaked all over the net, by now, for your iPodding pleasure.  Not the case.  Perhaps because she already has a major label deal – she’s with EMI’s Parlophone, and recently spent some time in the States recording her album (she stopped by East Village Radio to guest-DJ “Authentic Shit”) – they’re not looking for that kind of (Arctic Monkeys) exposure.  A shame.  But there are a couple sources out there:

She offered – before her myspace profile got a million listens – a limited-offer free mixtape to fans.  That tape, which features four Lily Allen demos (“LDN,” “Smile,” “Knock ‘em Out,” and “Cheryl Tweedy”) along with cuts by Ludacris, Squeeze, Creedence and others, is sitting under the currently-inactivated lilyallenmusic.com.  It can be downloaded here; the track listing is here.

After a bit of searching I found one whole Lily Allen mp3 on the web (via It’s Only a Phase):

Lilly Allen – Smile (mp3)

Exactly, Lil.

[UPDATE:  Yeti now has some mp3s; Eardrums Shall Fail, Homo Eclectic and Pardon My Freedom have others.]

As soon as there’s a way to buy this in the States, I’ll link to that.

You can stream her “LDN” video:  Windows or Realplayer

There are a pair of online interviews with Ms. Allen at SquirrelFood.net and Slam x Hype (“I’d like to do 3 albums, get married and fuck off to the countryside...”), and, of course, there’s her myspace blog.

*

It’s official:  Exclamation points are the hippest musical accessory going.

Following the lead of Clap Your Hands Say Yeah (where the punctuation is cooly implied... but present in the name’s inspiration) and (of course) !!! we’ve had Panic!  At the Disco, Captured!  By Robots, You Say Party!  We Say Die! and the upside-down thinking ¡Forward, Russia!.

Now, Gorilla vs. Bear and You Ain’t No Picasso bring us Oh No! Oh My!

With so many new bands out there, I guess it helps to shout.  (And don’t you think that new Neil Young song would look smart with a dot-dash or two after it?)

My new band, Lions! And Tigers! And Bears!*, will be Coming Soon!  To a Venue Near You!

*Don’t even go there.  Wolves are so very last year.

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