Nellie McKay is a brat, one assumes. And as much as we'd like to open a review about her sharp new album with heaping helpings of praise for her glimmering pre-rock pop confections, her swaggering indiscretions have made that impossible. Since her lauded debut, Get Away From Me, she's picked up a reputation as a tough cookie. Whether demanding her debut be a 2xCD affair or insisting on a title that openly mocked piano princess Norah Jones or worse still, rapping (badly), she's been something of an unshakable presence both on the web and in New York night clubs. After two delays in late 2005, McKay's label Sony/Columbia refused to put out her second album, Pretty Little Head, in its intended 2xCD (again) form. McKay, who had already moaned publicly about this and passed around her label chief's cell phone number at a concert, threw a tantrum and worked her way out of her deal (read: got dropped). The album subsequently leaked to the internet and has been available for some time before its arrival Tuesday on McKay's label, Hungry Mouse. It's a shame she's surrounded herself with all this quasi-controversy-- doubtful she'll ever have respectable sales numbers, so one questions all the fuss-- because Pretty Little Head is better than her debut. It's less showy, more confident, tighter, lacking antics-- it's confounding stylistically, just as her debut was, but less an act of throwing ideas at the wall.
Treading more fluently in cabaret pop and frisky lounge swinging, McKay, who self-produced the entire album, again inhabits that chipper, coquettish Doris Day coo while skewing modern with subject matter. On album opener "Cupcake", a dizzying parable about the act of declaring of love, she sings over uptempo percussion and finger-stubbing piano bashes, bellowing token phrases like, "I need you in the morning…" for more than two minutes before the perspective becomes clear: The song is meant to be sung by a homosexual male disco dancer to his lover. On first listen it's a cheap shot bait-and-switch move-- she even spells out "G-A-Y" in the lyrics. More time reveals McKay is not all that far from another piano-seated wiseacre, Randy Newman. And while Newman catches heat for a Disney-fied twilight, McKay's smarter stuff bares a strong resemblance to his early satirical work like "Rednecks" and "God's Song".
Sadly, there is still some willfully inane songwriting that McKay here, the sort of stuff that gets her branded as a safe-not-safe wildcard artist (hence her lousy rapping, which has thankfully ceased). "Columbia Is Bleeding", a message song, chronicles the revelation that Columbia University practiced animal cruelty in their labs last year. McKay's indictment, cheerily delivered but caustic, even found its way to YouTube. It's heady but tough to take seriously. "Pounce", a 56-second jaunt, is about, um, pouncing "like a pussy cat" when something comes along that you like. There's lots of meowing, and unless you can believe this is some sort of exercise in jingle-writing (a possible career move for the adept phrase-turner), the song is fairly dumb. There's also the requisite yodeling number, called "Yodel". Harumph.
Nellie's not all gags and gasps, though. "Long & Lazy River", one of the most rock-solid compositions here, is musty in its Ella Fitzgerald-style phrasing. Cyndi Lauper guests on "Beecharmer", and her clipped falsetto is a shock after 10 songs of McKay's knowing vocals. One suspects that Lauper and McKay get on well (the pictures inside the liners indicate as much), and their chemistry is goofily charming-- Lauper, 53, sounds like the kid in the equation. The other guest featured is k.d. Lang on the ecstatic, hymn-like "Rumor Had It Right". McKay can't hang with Lang when it comes to aged wisdom or vocal subtlety, but the conceit is another playful back and forth between two deeply expressive singers.
Whether crafting stone-faced chamber pop or flitting around on pink sheets singing bedroom torch songs, McKay shows she's got versatility in bunches on her second album. But even though she's cut down on the snarky commentary, one can't shake the feeling that she's putting more of her head in the music than her heart. It's only on the truly pristine songs, like the crystalline "There You Are in Me", that we get it-- she may be a brat, but it's the brains in her pretty little head that make McKay worth paying attention to.
