Spectreview: Carly Rae Jepsen – Dedicated

-RED-

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Pop is a pure craft, a genre obsessed with how the mechanical parts of music come together to produce endorphins. Good pop takes that assumed familiarity and applies some melange of personality and uniqueness in a way that separates it from the pack. Carly Rae Jepsen is revered as a pop songstress because she understands these things, and because she’s able to back up her water-tight sugar rushes of songs with an intoxicating, feather-light voice. Dedication follows her 2015 capstone E•mo•tion, and while it’s another dive into 80’s pop stylings it’s even more refined, more in line with the best of today’s pop than a relic of the past. Jepsen has an incredible sense in particular for vocal melodies, evident in tracks like the retrofitted 3/4 gallop of “I’ll Be Your Girl” or the elegant heart flutter of “No Drug Like Me.” She keeps to traditional pop structure without too much deviation, instead adding graceful touches that enliven her arrangement, like the closing saxophone on the Lush-indebted “Want You In My Room” or the synth continuation of her piano melody on the chorus of “The Sound.” It’s obvious there’s a ton of thought lent to her songs, and for the most part they’re sequenced well, although there’s a transition into mid-tempo tracks in the back half that weighs down the rest of the album. There are still plenty of enthralling moments even then, like the syncopated rhythmic buildup of “For Sure,” but this is where her insistence on the sameness of classic pop structure does her project a disservice, ensuring that many listeners won’t make it past the first seven or eight tracks. Regardless, Dedication is clear proof that Carly Rae Jepsen is still one of the most tasteful pop artists playing today, dedicated still to that inimitable sugar rush.

Recommended, ironically, for a party for many.