Given the hundreds of thousands of words hunted and pecked in the service of M.I.A.'s 2005 debut Arular, the odds on her delivering more grist for the mill with her followup were probably somewhere between slim and Amy Winehouse. Sure, Arular-- which has quietly sold 130,000 copies in the U.S.-- ultimately didn't seem to make much of an impact on the public at large, but the bountiful texts woven into its rich backstory worked like so much rockcrit catnip; momentarily setting aside the problem of M.I.A.'s own hazily defined personal politics, that album had the effect of nudging the critical forum back towards the kinds of issues it doesn't grapple with nearly enough. Issues that feel more important than ever as our traditional notions of genre and geography melt away, namely: How we square our desire for freshness and fun with the ugly politics of cultural tourism, or whether we bother at all; how the internet works like a hall of mirrors on identity and meaning; whether there's really any such thing as an empty visceral gesture.
If Arular provided a platform to discuss those things, Kala certainly invites us to continue the conversation. For all the scrutiny and cynicism aimed at her in the past 18 months, M.I.A. hasn't dialed herself down in the slightest. If anything, Kala finds her puffing out her chest and asserting herself more strenuously than ever, half-baked agit-prop and all. When she boasts on the stomping, Bollywood-sampling opener "Bamboo Banga" that she's "coming back with power/ Power," you get the sense that by "power" she means "courage of conviction." Regardless of how you square with her politics, her willingness to continue the muckracking is admirable, if not dimension-adding. Don't forget, she's rubbing elbows with the likes of Interscope and Timbaland now; for all the choices she might have made and the audiences she might have aimed at, the fresh-sounding, adventurous, and not-exactly-accessible Kala is the kind of record that obviously demanded a defined personal vision. Taken in concert with her understandable blasting of Pitchfork for perpetuating the male-led ingenue myth a few weeks ago, this campaign's single biggest revelation is turning out to be M.I.A. herself.
In contrast to her comparatively sparkly and streamlined debut, Kala is clattering, buzzy, and sonically audacious. While it still sounds, for lack of a better word, as digital as its predecessor, the primarily Switch-produced album paradoxically reaches further than the produced-by-committee Arular in terms of its overall palette of sounds. From the disco bassline and gloopy Eurovision strings of the swimmy Bollywood cover "Jimmy" to the hairy didgeridoos and pitched-up elementary school raps (courtesy of Aboriginal schoolboy crew Wilcannia Mob) of "Mango Pickle Down River" to the bubbling synths of the gloriously woozy "20 Dollar", this represents a significant expansion of M.I.A.'s already big tent of sounds. It also signifies her expansion as a performer. Where Arular saw her make the best of her fairly limited vocal abilities, Kala finds her reaching further outward, either by singing sweetly, as she does capably on "Jimmy", by peppering her chatter with sudden, free-floating melodies ("20 Dollar"), or by simply putting even more emphasis on the elastic qualities of her usual sing-songy delivery, as she does on the pinched-nose baile funk of "World Town" and the celebratory first single "Boyz"-- a triumph of her rhythmic patter if there ever was one.
On paper, M.I.A.'s politics still register as conflicted as ever. She's as enamoured with her own empty sloganeering as she is disapproving of the western world's, and as likely to remind us that AK47s cost $20 apiece in Africa ("20 Dollar") as she is to adorn the chorus of her summer songs with cash register ch-chings and gunfire clatter ("Paper Planes"). An easy hybrid of island patois and Westernized slang, most of her lyrics register as being primarily in service of their rhythms, anyway; as with Arular, the things M.I.A. insinuates are often more rewarding than those she actually says. For example, bits and pieces of standard whitebread indie rock tunes turn up like whack-a-moles all throughout Kala. "Bamboo Banga" pinches a verse from Jonathan Richman's 1976 middle American driving anthem "Roadrunner" only to flip the metaphor from cars to desert animals; "20 Dollar" knowingly pilfers the bassline to New Order's "Blue Monday" before throwing in a lyrical nod to Pixies; even the island-tinged nursery rhyme of "Paper Planes" borrows from the Clash's "Straight to Hell". Whether we're meant to infer anything larger (perhaps about colonization and cultural re-appropriation) from these little morsels is, of course, entirely up to us. But at the very least, it tells us that M.I.A.'s intuition always leads her to interesting places.
And make no mistake, she's in here. While there was a time when you might have been able to argue that Arular wasn't the product of a singular vision, this album makes it increasingly difficult, if not outright impossible, to say that about her output anymore. Even more interesting than how an artist acquires a listenership is what they do once they have it. With Kala, M.I.A.'s made it abundantly obvious where her interests lie, and it's not in toppling 130k. Who dares call her an opportunist now?
