Following a boost in visibility from Gotye's mega-hit "Somebody That I Used to Know", Kimbra's L.A.-recorded second album The Golden Echo is her wager for staying power, but too often it overstays its welcome. The Los Angeles-via-Melbourne-via-Hamilton singer reportedly cut the already-overlong album down to 12 tracks from 70, leaving cherished collaborations with Dave Longstreth and Flying Lotus to languish in a negative zone; while those ostensibly difficult decisions might suggest a ruthless approach to editing, the resulting album suggests that she's either a poor pick, leaving out some of her choicest shit, or doesn't know how to refine her ideas beyond adding to them until they sound overstuffed.
Gone is the alt-pop piper of "Settle Down" which had her lining up next to the Regina Spektorites; in its place, Kimbra attempts to sub a sprawling, clamorous vision where pop music is all things at all times. Bold and vulnerable, naked and swaddled, topical and timeless; the desire to reconcile these contradictions is everywhere on The Golden Echo, but it's a struggle to untangle them. Polarizing first single "90s Music" acts as a mission statement for the rest of the album, milking yester-yesteryear's R&B and flavoring it with kawaii affectation and a trap beat. "90s Music" sounds like it came from the temporal singularity, and if the other 11 tracks on The Golden Echo matched its coherence, it'd be an unmitigated success.
This potentially alienating take on pop places her as a contemporary of Janelle Monáe, except where Monáe's explicitly performative nature served as a rallying point for reconciling post-modern dehumanization and globalization, Kimbra seems too infatuated with the attendant spectacle to offer any comment. As an eclectic producer, Kimbra places herself to the left of the mainstream, but only just so: more straightforward tracks like "As You Are" and "Nobody But You", as well as the disco slink of "Miracle", alternate between lazy and capitulating modes. "Miracle" is perhaps the most egregious example of this occurrence: luscious, punchy, and faithful to the genre, "Miracle" could've been the strongest track on the album if it didn't drag on for a minute and a half too long. If "90s Music" is emblematic of The Golden Echo's squandered potential for success, "Miracle" is emblematic of all its shortcomings.
In spite of all that, amongst this interminable mess are enough moments that show Kimbra to be one of the most adventurous pop artists going. She nearly one-ups Passion Pit at their own game on the breezy, gluco-sick "Carolina", while the languid, lovelorn "Rescue Him" casts a distorted shadow of Justin Timberlake. For now, though, Kimbra's status as "That singer from the Gotye song" woefully underserves her full potential, but so does The Golden Echo.
