When I listen to The ArchAndroid, I hear the last seventy years of music. Given pretty much carte-blanche from Bad Boy Record to produce her debut album the way she wanted it, Janelle Monáe and her team put together an album that earns the title of genre-bending: R&B both past and present; Soul both neo and classic; classical music; hip-hop; blues; folk; funk; psychedelic pop and the movie soundtrack. Throughout this whole seventy minutes Monáe conducts the soundtrack to the world in her head, and asks you to join her inside. That it works as a whole is remarkable. That it is so thoroughly enjoyable is a miracle.
The easiest thing to proclaim would be that Suite II is where the singles are held and Suite III contains the more experimental tracks. There is an element of truth to this, but that implies both that experiments are not found on the first half and that they are two separate entities in terms of their philosophy. From the very firsts notes of The ArchAndroid these statements can be found muddied and simplistic, with the grandiose of Suite II’s introduction containing both interpolations and straight-up lyrics from songs that will not come until the third Suite (the most obvious being “57821”). The Elfmanesque arrangement here makes one imagine a large red hall with people hurrying into their chairs as the show is about to begin. As an album experience this is something that begs for you to sit down and pay attention, even if the individual song experience is its own kind of rewarding.
And like the beams of light that give the robot woman in Metropolis human form, the old traditions of music move into the new with “Dance or Die.” But the first words on this album do not come from Monáe herself, but professional wordspitter Saul Williams, whose carefully chosen singular words – and his often used water imagery – recall the story to this series in such amount of time (and as this would be most people’s introduction to Monáe, this was a wise and clever choice). When we first hear Janelle Monáe’s voice, this up-and-coming R&B artist wrong foots is in the best possible way: she raps. All this helps to both distance us from Monáe the artist and intrigue us to Monáe the storyteller, and her, well, Saul William’s like delivery quickly brings us her story of escape and rebellion of dance. At the very least she is more instantly acclimatised to rap than Prince was, but more on him later.
The next three songs are more overtly about this escape. “Faster” is a futuristic gospel number (an adjective that will basically be assumed from here on in) that brings some energetic claps and bouncy guitars, as well as the first references to Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep and the idea of “shaking like a schizo” (is this perhaps an allusion to the multiple personalities Monáe bodies in these albums?). Meanwhile “Locked Inside” is a fantastic Off the Wall disco tune whose carousel chorus and guitar breakdown make this the first capital G great song of many on the album. Then “Sir Greendown” provides the calming calming and opulent build up to the next two tracks, with cymbals like wind chimes ringing in the romantic outside breeze, and with the instrumentation that recalls 60’s psychedelic pop like “Some Velvet Morning.” True for pretty much all this album – but especially for this first suite and these five songs – is how these songs flow into each other even more so than The Chase Suite. It helps to maintain us in Monáe’s world, as well as give more propulsion to this ongoing escape.
We then move on to what is probably the high point of the album, at least in terms of this album’s poppy and energetic core: the one-two punch of “Cold War” and “Tightrope.” Outkast’s influence is apparent in this record (complete with the drumbeat from “B.O.B”), only the guitar work by Kellindo Parker is both rockier and more dreamlike. This song works because Monáe realises a “Cold War” is anything but; it’s full of turmoil and paranoia, but despite being a song about battling emotions to keep a cold front (“Don’t you cry when you say goodbye”) is made of a fiery intensity that extends to the quietest organs on the track (Is it just me that thinks the introduction wouldn’t sound too far out of an Arcade Fire song). Then we move on to the album’s lead single, “Tightrope,” a track that could be construed as a typical “haters” song if it wasn’t both so tied to Cindi Mayweather’s storyline of rebellion or wasn’t, to quote a major philosopher here, goddamn fucking amazing. Monáe gets her James Brown on as she commands an audience with call and response chants and refers to herself as “something like a terminator.” The irony of saying we can’t get too high or too low is so apparent because, seriously, how could no one dance to this. The fact that this society tried to push the Dougie but no one is doing the Tightrope shows that there is an inherent fault with our species. Big Boi’s verse on this track is also on point thematically and technically, with a rhyming NASDAQ and ass Crack that is up there with “sarcophagus/oesophagus” in that year’s “so kind of out there that it’s pretty awesome” club. I couldn’t go past this section without mentioning her amazing performance of this song on David Letterman. This is then the part where I ask why Janelle Monáe is not more famous. Why is Janelle Monáe not more famous? Someone needs to give me a sufficient explanation.
But anyway, this piece looks like it’s going to be long so let us move on to “Neon Gumbo,” a tweaked reversal of the last ninety-two seconds of “Many Moons.” I’m not sure how this relates to overall story arc – if you have your own suggestions, please post them – but it makes a peculiar transition to “Oh, Maker.” Before the electric drums introduce themselves, the ringing guitars and slightly echoing vocals would sound out of place on a Rubber Soul era Beatles track. Like those tracks, it is both tied to something concrete (a love song to Anthony Greenwood) and some surreal and debateable imagery, particular its use of colour. I’m sure there is an explanation for each colour choice, but they are so expressive on their own that you understand even when you don’t understand it. Also, the interesting word choice of “Maker” relates back to the albums robotic imagery and religious imagery; Cindi Mayweather as a robotic Christ figure.
This side of her personality aptly comes alive in the next song. With a bassline that kind of sounds like “Rock Lobster,” the proto-punkish “Come Alive (War of the Roses)” brings that Cold War to a boiling point with Monáe getting her inner shrieker on (good god, it’s mighty impressive) instigated by the enigmatic “Tommy”. This then contrasts with the more elegant sounding final track on the first suite, “Mushroom & Roses.” I assume those things are served with “Butterscotch clouds, a tangerine/ And a side order of ham,” because this song wouldn’t sound out of place at all on Sign O The Times (his, shall we say, promiscuity represented here by the recurring character of Blueberry Mary). This arrival to a sanctuary sees Monáe’s – and Mayweather’s – voice at its most obviously robotic, almost merging with the phasered guitars with an amazing synergy that brings this suite to an anthemic close…
…that also moves graciously into the third one. Samples of songs past (“Sir Greenwood” and “Oh, Maker”) and future (“Wondaland” and “BaBapByeYa,”) bleeds in with more Eastern instrumentation for this “Overture,” and unlike the first segue, this is such an unnoticeable to the next song that unless their wasn’t singing I would think they are part of the same track. The bliss and imagery of “Neon Valley Street” is also very similar to a Prince song, and her use of the term “illegal aliens” is another instance of Monáe tying sci-fi imagery to social conscious imagery so clearly and obviously that you almost can’t see a difference.
Weirdly “Make the Bus,” with its P-Funk flavours, is the only track that jumps out as being sort of out of place. But considering its placement after a fade out I can only assume this jump in dynamics was intentional. The most noticeable focus on synth work so far, Monáe and guest Of Montreal trade bars to such a degree of unity that both artists nearly get lost into one entity. Like “Sir Greenwood,” the lyrics also help keep this science fiction fantasy “in the realm of fantasy,” and those bouncy notes really help give this song a trance like feel that then transitions gracefully into the synth pop glory of Wondaland. Compared to Tom Tom Club by some critics – though honestly if it was a male vocal these instruments would fit nicely into Talking Head’s Speaking in Tongues – Cindi Mayweather’s robotic voice reveals itself again as we get to the ultimate literalness of this fantasy. The airy keyboard and percussion are the sound of the cloud like sanctuary Cindy Mayweather finds herself (a sanctuary complete with choral chants) yet this dreamy feel still has a tropical vibe that keeps every danceable enough to maintain rebellion.
It is here that we get one of the only changes in POV throughout this entire project in the folk ballad “57821” (tied with best folk song set in space along with Queen’s “’39”). The hook of “One by one/It’s your time/Lead them both back to one” followed by images of light is, as well as some obvious Neo/Jesus parallels – philosophically the polar opposite of U2’s song also named for a number: there a union of one is still seen as two separate people, here they meet up as one entity that is stronger for having been two. However, although this romantic instrumentation is aligned with Greenwood’s perspective, the thing that I find most interesting about this counterpoint to “Sir Greenwood” is that, in both, there is a slight fetishisation of each other’s status. In “Sir Greenwood,” it is Anthony’s class, and here it is the fact Cindi is a robot who is here defined by her code as opposed to her actual name. This fetishism in replacement of connection could very well be intentional – although there is definitely love present – but it was something I found interesting.
Speaking of interesting, “Say You’ll Go” very cleverly and impactfully uses the “Clair de lune” towards the back end of the track to be in future counterpoint with the jazz of “BaBopByeYa.” (is this, like the first two tracks, an intentional juxtaposition between the music of white and black cultures?) Sometimes acts like this blur the line between whether you are enjoying this song or the sample, and the first two thirds do kind of suffer somewhat from what I like to call an album’s “penultimate song syndrome.” But it is still has a great atmospheric percussion, and some great mixture or choral and lead singing from Monáe.
But all this has been building up to what is, next to the poppier tracks like “Cold War,” “Tightrope,” “Come Alive” and “Wondaland,” my favourite track on the album; of “BaBopByeYa” (I know listing four songs beforehand is a bit of a cop out, but this album is full of almost too many modern classics). The best sci-fi score John Barry never penned (or did pen, depending on your Moonraker love), “BaBopByeYa” acts as both climax and conclusion, this jazzy march of rebellion acts as both this stories immediate and messy wrap over its nearly 9 minute playing time. The paranoid strings and voices would fuel Daniel Plainview’s most intense outrages, and the musical transition that takes place on the line “I hear echoes of your laughter in the corners of my mind/ While I memorize each detail of your intricate design” adds more credence to the Ex Machina style android-as-fetish theory for Mr Greendown. Her final cries of goodbye are as complicated emotionally as they are sonically, as those final flutes accompany both Cindi Mayweather leaving her new world, and us leaving Janelle Monáe’s.
2010 was one of the best years of music in recent memory, with Arcade Fire, Kanye West and Flying Lotus putting out amazing albums that immediate had an impact on the sonic landscape of music. But even in the midst of instant classic like The Suburbs and My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy, and cult favourites like Cosmogramma, Janelle Monáe’s The ArchAndroid still manages to stand out amongst prestigious company by being just as ambitious, just as immediate and even more diverse. Its amazing that in its 17 track arsenal there is not a bad one among them, and its even more remarkable that it manages to tell both a narrative for those searching, and accessible and amazing genre experimentations for those who aren’t. If you’re looking for both, this should be one of your all time favourite records; it’s certainly one of mine.
What did you think of the album, though?
Janelle Monáe Rankings
- The ArchAndroid
- Metropolis: The Chase Suite