Customize Consent Preferences

We use cookies to help you navigate efficiently and perform certain functions. You will find detailed information about all cookies under each consent category below.

The cookies that are categorized as "Necessary" are stored on your browser as they are essential for enabling the basic functionalities of the site. ... 

Always Active

Necessary cookies are required to enable the basic features of this site, such as providing secure log-in or adjusting your consent preferences. These cookies do not store any personally identifiable data.

No cookies to display.

Functional cookies help perform certain functionalities like sharing the content of the website on social media platforms, collecting feedback, and other third-party features.

No cookies to display.

Analytical cookies are used to understand how visitors interact with the website. These cookies help provide information on metrics such as the number of visitors, bounce rate, traffic source, etc.

No cookies to display.

Performance cookies are used to understand and analyze the key performance indexes of the website which helps in delivering a better user experience for the visitors.

No cookies to display.

Advertisement cookies are used to provide visitors with customized advertisements based on the pages you visited previously and to analyze the effectiveness of the ad campaigns.

No cookies to display.

Amy Studt - My Paper Made Men
Album Review

Amy Studt – My Paper Made Men

For one with a head start, it must be frustrating to find yourself boxed in so quickly. The well trodden path of introspective-female-singer-songwriter is a busy highway these days. Amy Study was marketed as a kind of Alanis Morissette for tweenagers a few years ago, and although her vocals have matured, the subject matter of her second album would still satisfy a sixth-form feminist.

Amy whoops and wails through confessions of fragility like the natural successor to Tori Amos, with the same gratingly cathartic type of lyrics (“Oh Daddy Daddy don’t send me away, never been a bad girl” in She Ran). There’s more than a nod to Kate Bush, notably in the banshee calls of Chasing The Light, a chugging bassline in Sad Sad World that would fit PJ Harvey and a breathy piano number (Here Lies Love) that owes something to Cat Power.

But the album has a weakness for building into the emo-opera of Evanescence and laying the lovely-loser shtick on a bit thick (“She walks alone. She’s not invited to parties” in She Walks Beautiful). Instead of the arrhythmic and polyrhythmic wanderings that give you a Bjork or a Coco Rosie, there’s simply a hotchpotch of styles within each track, from smoky jazz in One Last Cigarette, through the Hall-and-Oates-ness of Walking Out to the playground chorus of harpies in Nice Boys.

There’ll always be music for wronged women, but without the jauntiness of Feist or Fiona Apple it’s easy to sound self absorbed or victimized, making My Paper Made Men more of a tearful raspberry to the world than a two-fingered salute.

Share this!

Comments

[wpdevart_facebook_comment curent_url="https://werk.re/2008/05/13/amy-studt-my-paper-made-men/" order_type="social" title_text="" title_text_color="#000000" title_text_font_size="0" title_text_font_famely="Roboto Mono, monospace" title_text_position="left" width="100%" bg_color="#d4d4d4" animation_effect="random" count_of_comments="5" ]