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Member Since: 10/13/2008
Posts: 20,553
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Good review from the NY Times:
SHONTELLE
“No Gravity”
(SRC/Universal Motown)
Shontelle’s “Impossible” is a lovely thing. A pensive ballad that displays its hurt without histrionics, it was one of this summer’s most memorable songs. And, impressively, Shontelle sounds stronger the more hopeless the lyrics get, her feelings doled out steely eyed, in precise measures: “Shout it from the rooftops/ Write it on the skyline/ All we had is gone now.”
Unlike many well-fitting things, this song was a gift, produced and partly written by Arnthor Birgisson, a member of the Swedish cabal responsible for so much shiny pop in the last decade. (He’s also worked with Max Martin, the leader of that pack.) Shontelle has a thin voice, but an emphatic one, and this song makes perfect use of her vocals, which thicken on each beat before receding again, a steady thump beneath the chest.
That’s one idea on how to reimagine Shontelle, a Barbadian singer nurtured by the team that brought Rihanna to mainstream ears. And it’s a far cry from her 2008 debut album, “Shontelligence,” which toyed heavily with Caribbean accents — musically, by producers, and vocally, by Shontelle herself.
The rest of her follow-up, “No Gravity,” a competent, sometimes exciting pop album, collects other attempts: in essence, a series of portraits drawn by people with radically different styles. The plangent disco number “DJ Made Me Do It,” with a breezy, meaningless verse by Asher Roth, feels like a facsimile of Estelle’s “American Boy.” A remix of “T-Shirt” from her first album by The-Dream turns it into a The-Dream song, which, in fairness, it almost was in the first place. The title track and “Take Ova” are European dance-pop through and through.
Emotionally blank and appealing in an undistinguished way, Shontelle fits them all. But some shadows are worth dancing around. The album opens with the tortured domestic-abuse narrative “Perfect Nightmare.” Produced by Rodney Jerkins, it’s cleverly executed, turning midway from moody torch song to defiant but still worried dance number: “Sometimes I feel safe/ Sometimes I really don’t.”
But given that Shontelle is working so assiduously to avoid being compared with Rihanna, it’s difficult not to think of that other singer here; this comes across like the direct musical reckoning Rihanna never made after her 2009 fight with Chris Brown. It’s haunted by context. On an album that otherwise largely avoids taking a stand, this song ends up as an act of bad faith; it’s a mold worth breaking. JON CARAMANICA
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I'm going to listen soon.
Future single please 
