The Non-Grain of That Voice

The Impostume finally confesses its guilty feelings of lust and terror on beholding the icy tones of Eve Libertine, and it seems the discussion of that voice has taken a turn for the rum. Which isn't really my fault, as I was set off by the video/song combination chez Hennings, and by her really rather key talk of the 'streak of the womanly'. The definition of that voice seems to have gotten pretty wide (from Dorothy Moskowitz's slightly sinister calmness to all manner of highly showtune belters) so I might widen it a bit, and rope Kelis into all it: especially as we have R&B (in both 60s earthy and 90s melismatic senses) as that voice antipode. Essentially there are two distinct versions of the R&B female vocal: the depersonalised, replicant rapaciousness of Cassie, or whoever it is who sings 'Fantasy' on the new Timbaland LP (according to the sleeve they're called 'Money'!), and the oh-so adult hollering of Beyonce.



Kelis, though, has something very similar to that voice: it doesn't make a fuss of itself, sounds somewhat old beyond its years, comes across as both somewhat glacial and full. Particularly on candidate for most underrated record of the last 10 years Wanderland, it totally transcends all those somewhat creepy 'Good Girl Gone Bad' cliches to sound alternately imperious and uncertain. Not that there's anything necessarily wrong with vocal science and droning tones, although the apologia for the classic little girl first LP, whore second LP schema doesn't quite ring true (interesting also that the second Kelis album bombed precisely because of its refusal to follow this pattern, which she's seemingly spent her career since trying to atone for). It's the tension between the full-bodied/disembodied which makes the term 'womanly' appropriate here, in that it sounds like an adult voice rather than an 18 year old's - albeit without the grimly gutsy, overdemonstrative horrors that usually entails.