Grade: B-
The world has another female pop group whether it wants one or not.
London-based trio Stooshe released its debut album “London With the Lights On” on Monday. It’s a flippant female exposé that warrants a lot of eye rolling.
At first, it’s fun to hear the girls interject with spoken word. But after a few tracks of British-accented screaming and yelping, you feel like you’re a sober person at a stranger’s drunken bachelorette party.
Luckily for Stooshe, we live in a world of guilty pleasures. The outlandish, bizarre and annoying are embraced. Nicki Minaj, who toured with Stooshe during her “Pink Friday” tour, has an unconventional and sometimes irritating image. Yet the fans love her. The same could happen with Stooshe.
If you set aside these nuances, which is not easy to do, you see that Stooshe is talented. Their voices are strong, their harmonies flawless and their music is thankfully without auto-tune. The girls try different things in “London With the Lights On.” We hear 1960s doo-wop “Ain’t No Other Me,” R&B hip-hop “Here Comes the Hotstepper” and even a line-dance track “My Man Music.”
Stooshe wants to appeal to young crowds with a super poppy feel, but the girl band isn’t afraid of sexual innuendo, either. It’s difficult to determine Stooshe’s target audience. For instance, the cheery “Your Own Kind Of Beautiful” track, commence eye rolling, could double as a Hannah Montana single. But in “Hoochi Mumma,” the girls sing, “Hoochi mumma mumma / Gonna bang her bang her / Hope you wanna wanna / Be a baby father.”
Which brings me to this question: Is this album about inner-beauty or intercourse? Artists can definitely sing about various things, but those are vastly different. Perhaps the group is still trying to find its voice.
Regardless, Stooshe’s out-loud and outrageous attitude will either make or break the group. In these days, we know music is fueled by characters such as Minaj, Kanye West and Daft Punk. But we also know there’s a fine line between the captivating bizarre and the irritating bizarre. We’ll have to see how Stooshe navigates that line.
