I salt and pepper my mango

--MIA : Arular--
MIA has a sultry, flirty voice and an eclectic sound that assembles and deconstructs music from the East, London, Africa, and South America. Breathless and bilingual, she grows this diversity into something that is dissonant and ruthlessly original.

Caribbean beats appear here as well, giving MIA a sound Gwen Stefani might aspire too if she didn't have the burden of cross-promoting her albums with slash-and-wear thrift store couture clothing lines. Lacking that, MIA has found plenty of time to make music that is both danceable and pertinent.

The effect is as hot as Stefani used to be, but not in that pouty, vulnerable way. It's passionate [love, violence, politics], rich and deep. You might find it odd that this girl, talking revolution and populism, is kinda turning you on. Soon though, you'll wonder how you lived without her alluring earnestness. Or that steel drum and those Donkey Kong bleeps.

If you like to shake your ass--and I mean really shake it--you're strange to me and I regard you with suspicion. Normally, body parts swaying in time with a rhythm makes me vomit with embarrassment. This album, though, this lilting, intrepid mish-mash, definitely made a limb or two flail.

Calling MIA's beats infectious is a disservice to both the beats and that word. She's post-infectious. Arular is a retrovirus that fuses to you, leaving you changed in a way you'll be reluctant to tell your friends about. They wouldn't get it. They don't get you. Not anymore. Not after this.

[This is a draft of a capsule review I'm writing. It's real hard to only write a few words . . .]