Album Review: Carly Rae Jepsen- E•MO•TION

If you’re looking for some kind of witty, one-line hot take on this Carly Rae Jepsen album, I’ll just put it right up front, with the hopes you’ll stick around to read the rest of this review that I’ve been pouring over:

Carly Rae Jepsen’s new album is the best Haim album of 2015.

Maybe that has something to do with the work of wunder producer Ariel Rechtshaid, who was pretty much instrumental in honing that “Haim sound” that seamlessly blended R&B with 1970s AM radio gold on their debut Days Are Gone.

Well, while he’s listed as a co-writer and producer on only two of Jepsen’s tracks on E•MO•TION, his fingerprints are all over this thing in its structure, and the overall sound, which of course continues the gentrification of pop and R&B by the Urban Outfitters set.

Not that there’s anything wrong with it. Especially when it works. And oh, how it works on Jepsen’s E•MO•TION.

Remember Carly Rae Jepsen? The Canadian pop star who rose to fame three years ago based on the success of the inescapable “Call Me Maybe?”  Yeah. That was a pretty infectious song, huh? Well what the hell happened to her? People kind of wrote her off as a one-hit wonder, I guess, and her album didn’t chart as well as folks (i.e. her label, her A&R, et. al) would have liked.

So rather than become another casualty of the pop machine, she and her team just fucking LABORED over the follow up. And you can hear it in every note on E•MO•TION—the thing sounds like it cost a small fortune to produce, and every song goes for broke. The good news is that Jepsen succeeds, as nearly every track on this album works, thus making it the frontrunner for the “big pop record” of 2015.

It’s a surprising success too—an absolutely gigantic sounding record that is bold, sultry, and fun; a total summer guilty pleasure of a listen. E•MO•TION starts off strong with a triple threat in the huge opening track, “Run Away With Me,” the titular song, and the album’s lead single, “I Really Like You.”

I say it’s “sultry” because Jepsen doesn’t exactly ooze sexuality the way some of her other pop counterparts may—its all pretty PG-13 stuff here, but there’s a lot of evocative ideas that takes things a step further than, say, last year’s effort from Arianna Grande. “I could be your sinner in secret,” Jepsen coos on the opener, then later, “Late night watching television/but how’d we end up in this position? It’s way too soon, I know this isn’t love.”

While E•MO•TION isn’t a concept album by any stretch of the imagination, it does push the envelope as far as what the overall theme that runs throughout the course of the record, which, of course, is love. Because pop music. But also, it’s kind of  “a question of love,” rather, which makes it a slightly more (and surprisingly) intelligent listen. It’s about loving too fast and the consequences that come from that. And yes, it does eventually stray from that theme with some of the misfires, like “Boy Problems,” “Your Type,” and the “fame has a price” tale “LA Hallucinations.”  But straying from the overall conceit of the record is forgivable because even these songs—they aren’t the strongest of the bunch—are still generally fun.

Much should be made of the album’s production values—the seamless blend of pure pop, 80s nostalgia, alternative or post-R&B, and indie credibility is what makes it, even in its weakest moments, a fun listen. Don’t get it twisted: Jepsen is by no means an “artist,” though she does receive co-writing credits on the albums songs; but what I’m saying is that in working with the best of the best when it comes to pop hit makers, they bring out the best in her.

Structurally, E•MO•TION’s first five songs are completely unfuckwithable and are without a doubt, the best on the album. They run the spectrum of the big, shout along moments, that post-Haim vibe I mentioned early on, refrains you learn instantly, and slow burning late night jams (peep the bassline on “All That.”) As the album heads into its final act, Jepsen wisely switches back and forth between those less successful songs, and pieces that continue to move the momentum of the album forward, like “Let’s Get Lost.”

Because 2015, E•MO•TION is available in multiple special editions, including a “deluxe edition,” that tacks on three additional songs, as well as a special edition only available at Target, which another two into the mix, bringing it to 17 songs total. Much like many deluxe edition tracks, they don’t really bring anything extra to the table, nor do they take away from the general feeling of the record. The mid-tempo electro-ballad “Never Get to Hold You” is the most essential and listenable of the bunch, and is the one that would fit in the best with the content of the standard edition of the album.

For some reason, Pitchfork opted to review E•MO•TION, giving it a modest rating, but chiding it for not letting the listener in on who Carly Rae Jepsen is. I guess I’m not really sure why one would expect something so personal from pop music. Perhaps it’s because we are living in a post-Taylor Swift world, where Swift’s life as tabloid fodder becomes material for her songs—and the circle then remains unbroken. And yes, if you overthink the album like that, Jepsen never really does let the listener in on who she is, but rather, lets them in and keeps them waiting in the foyer.

But if you don’t overthink E•MO•TION, and take it for what it is, it’s a big, fun record arriving late in the summer as a way to revive what has been a rather unimpressive year for pop music. It can be a guilty pleasure, sure, but Jepsen is really on to something here, and it’s so good, it’s the kind of record that you don’t really have to feel guilty about enjoying.

E•MO•TION is out now in myriad editions via Interscope.