With notes of hip-hop and a touch of ambient pop blended into the instrumental framework of the music, you know that Chesca is going to give us something really sexy in her song “Orange County Juice,” but if you think that’s where the seduction ends on her new album Feel the Breeze, you’re in for quite the surprise this summer. Feel the Breeze isn’t all flash ala “Orange County Juice” and the anthemic lead single “Crocodile Tears;” on the contrary, the substance of Europop-throwback “Happy,” melodic hip-hop crossover “No Words,” sadistic pop/rocker “You Ain’t the 1 4 Me,” and gloomy vocal piece “Woman Down” are a product of compositional substance unrivaled in this player’s scene today.
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Chesca sounds neither dependent on poetic pomp in “Let’s Say” nor overindulgent surrealism in the title track here; from the guitar-powered “Could You Remind Me?,” to the new wave hybrid “Could You Wake Up Now?,” this is an LP that sees her cutting away the fat and importing as much eccentricity as the speakers can contain without splitting open from the resulting intensity. The sum of her efforts? A record in Feel the Breeze that might be one of the most complete pop works I’ve heard in a long, long time.
Chesca’s vocal can be as breathy as it can be stern, and she goes both ways when constructing something meaningful out of the melodic ramblings in “Could You Wake Up Now?,” “Let’s Say,” and “Happy.” There’s a subtle hip-hop component to a lot of the material here, and I think it’s most noticeable in “Orange County Juice,” “No Words” and “Could You Remind Me?,” although not in the cosmetic fashion becoming annoyingly common in a lot of indie-pop at the moment.
There’s definitely crossover appeal to the aesthetics she’s made her own in Feel the Breeze, but I love how she isn’t making experimentation the sole theme of the music in this record at all. She still has something personal to say to us in “Happy,” “Woman Down,” the title track, and “Crocodile Tears,” and that isn’t being precluded by any overarching ambitions best worked out over the course of several full-length albums.
Getting down to the nuts and bolts of this LP, I think it’s fair to say that the majority of Feel the Breeze is an unpredictable outing that remains straightforward enough to satisfy traditional pop fans and those who prefer the elegantly eclectic feel of the college radio dial (which is no easy feat at all). Chesca leaves no stone unturned in her quest for developing a true alternative to the mainstream mundanity we’ve all gotten a little too used to in the FM sphere over the past ten years, but out of this stagnation, we’re seeing the rise of a versatile artist like this one seemingly destined to have a big effect right now. This has been an interesting summer for the pop underground, and singer/songwriters like Chesca have largely been at the center of the action from start to finish; though I haven’t heard any that captured my attention quite as she has in this album.
Kim Muncie