If there’s one thing the up-and-coming girl-pop star Lenka Kripac can do, it’s expertly craft an image. The catchy tunes, varied tapestry of instruments and her clear-as-a-bell voice on her recently released album Lenka exude and personify the qualities of childlike innocence and enthusiasm for life.
Not only does the music work to deliver this persona, but her marketing does too. The map-like liner notes that come with this album explode with the image of a giant tree around which Crayola-drawn song titles hang or float. There is a picture on the cover of the artist herself in a bright blue dress and red tights, legs tucked under her and hands folded in her lap. This further propels the notion of grade school simplicity, and her aura implies inhibition, naivete and utter creativity in her music.
The energetic track “Bring Me Down” and the more subdued “Dangerous and Sweet” encapsulate this unique music style the best. Their friendly piano, restless electric keyboard, cheery bells, energetic drums, buzzing trumpet line and tambourine are a reflection of Lenka’s own eclectic history (She grew up in Australia with a jazz musician for a dad and a hippie mom.). The instruments fuse perfectly with Lenka’s own breathy voice to create catchy tunes you’ll find yourself humming later on.
The complex sound texture and addicting melodies of the upbeat tracks are fitting for a mindless, indulgent listen. But what of the simpler, slower tracks? Turns out, what they lack in musicality, they make up for in insight. In the subdued “Skipalong,” Lenka tells a former “sugar bomb” even if they want to fight it out, they should resist, let it go and part from each other peacefully. Likewise, a bright electric keyboard and Lenka’s crooning lament and obsess over a lost lover in the hauntingly sweet “Like a Song.”
The shuffling drumbeats and mindless backup singing of “Anything I’m Not” halt the flow of the album temporarily, but the lag in musical quality is soon forgotten with the unexpected mainstream pop sound of “Knock Knock” and sneaky piano melodies of “Trouble is a Friend.”
Lenka was recorded in a Woodstock, N.Y. studio with the support of — among others — singer/songwriter Missy Higgins, composer/director David Campbell (Beck’s father) and producer Mike Elizondo, who has also worked with Fiona Apple and Jay-Z. Lenka references this privileged musical past in the track “Live Like You’re Dying” by directing listeners to “use what’s been given to you.”
Although the album could use more upbeat tracks, the varied musical texture, evocative lyrics and breathy, melodic voice of the singer herself deems Lenka an overall new indie-pop masterpiece. In the final tune of her album, “We Will Not Grow Old,” Lenka gives us one central message to take away: “But oh, if there’s one thing that we know/ It’s that we will not grow old.” That is pure Lenka.
4 1/2 stars out of 5
