3.5 out of 4 stars
Back in the day, an album had to be a collection of 3-plus minute songs with a hook, a chorus, multiple verses and a bridge. It was seamlessly produced and sounded more sterile and professional than Don Draper pitching a campaign.
"Crush Songs," the debut (!) solo effort from Yeah Yeah Yeahs singer Karen O, is not one of those albums. Its longest track is 2 minutes, 57 seconds, and the whole thing sounds like it was recorded in a musty basement on a rainy day. Fortunately, that seems to be exactly what O was going for.
These 15 songs could easily have been the soundtrack to a longer version the night Jenny Slate drunk-dials her ex in "Obvious Child." They're messy, spur-of-the-moment, downtrodden. In fact, "Crush Songs" was recorded back in 2006-07, when O was 27, according to Consequence of Sound, and is what the website terms "a slew of rough drafts."
Maybe that's why it feels so true to life. I can easily imagine sitting around on a rainy day or a depressed evening listening to "Crush Songs" with a glass of bourbon, slurring lines like "Love is soft/Love's a [bleeping] bitch/Do I really need/Another habit like you?" from "Rapt."
While I love "The Moon Song," a more polished version of this album's stream-of-consciousness pieces that appears on the "Her" soundtrack (unsurprisingly my favorite movie of 2013), the rawness of "Crush Songs" is like standing in a doorway listening to a private conversation without getting caught. It's only 25 minutes-you probably can go unnoticed for that long.