Fake-diamond punchlines aside-- and on a label called Fool's Gold, no less-- there's something hard to shake about the all-surface nature of Cubic Zirconia's floss. Here's a group from New York that shoots for a Basement Jaxx-caliber house/funk crossover, one that rides on the presence of a singer who paid her dues alongside Detroit rap'n'B artists Platinum Pied Pipers, mutant-disco purveyors the Phenomenal Handclap Band, and post-dubstep architect Kingdom. Cubic Zirconia set their sights on a genre-demolishing, universal club-hopper soundtrack that's aimed to fuse altered-state headrush and restless libido in ways that made those two sensations feel inseparable. And after surveying the crowded field of all-purpose post-hip-hop/post-electro dance music, they set about figuring out what parts to draw from to synthesize it all into the only album in the field that anybody would need to own.
The end result of all this is Follow Your Heart, and it's the most frustrating kind of retro-pastiche. This is one of those albums that attempts to fuse multiple instances of the familiar instead of trying to coax underheard and unusual ideas out of a single deeper vein. There's a dominant, vaguely 1980s feel about it, and even if there's some loosely hinted signs of picking up a particular inspiration from the big three mid-American hotspots of the era-- Minneapolis, Detroit, and Chicago-- they're rolled out with what feels like the musical equivalent of received wisdom, letting experienced listeners fill in the blanks in the hope that the blanks aren't the only thing they hear. You like frenetic, high-concept synthesized funk à la Prince? See if you can cope with the way "Freebase You" and "Runnin' in and Out of Love" siphon it into a nuance-free piledriver. Think acid/techno fusion is interesting? The title track provides the absolute basic clichés of that potential and lets it ride out on autopilot. You want an aloof, slightly off singer muttering come-ons and empty debauched phraseology over electro homages that don't sound much different as 30-year throwbacks than they did as 20-year throwbacks? "Cherry Nights" and "Yellow Spaceship Pt. 2" have you covered.
The singer in question, Tiombe Lockhart, is not untalented-- there are some flashes of charisma and fuck-what-you-think oddness that sneak through during odd moments in Follow Your Heart. But there's this sort of semi-intentional Teflon aloofness to her voice, and for the most part her notes just kind of drone out instead of soaring or piercing or hitting with any real impact. For most singers, that detached, flat, and affectless tendency can sound either cool or empty depending on the surrounding production.
So when it's hard to tell how much depth the backing track's supposed to have, it's also hard to suss out any real emotion from that pro-forma deadpan, whether she's quipping about "writing a neo-soul song" on the exact opposite thereof in electro workout "Darko" or making lovestruck euphoria sound mildly diverting on "Take Me High". It only becomes more obvious when she's pitted against someone with some chops (Bilal providing subtly rich harmonies on "Night or Day") or an actual personality (Dâm-Funk going all-out on "I Got What You Need"). And when you pair that voice and those beats with similarly placeholder-feeling lyrics-- "Summertime" actually follows up the couplet, "Never makes me feel bad/ Never makes me feel sad," with the line, "Every time I see you my heart skips a beat"-- it's enough to make you wonder if trendy NYC dance music's found a way to run on aggregators.
