Love Reality

Style: Glittery, glitzy flashbulb pop; compare to Girls Aloud, Natasha Bedingfield

Love Reality

Love Reality

Charmaine

November 2, 2010

Top tracks: “Run,” “Epiphany”

Early recordings found this 24-year-old working in acoustic singer/songwriter mode a la Jennifer Knapp. But this new album finds Charmaine beating the superstars of the Billboard pop chart scene at their own game. Even the most worshipful songs—listen to her plea to be rescued on “Fighting Furies” and try to avoid the pull of God on “Run”—feel dance floor ready, aping the dizzy mirror ball electro of multi-platinum producers like Xenomania. It’s when the music aims to split the difference between her old approach and this modernist attack that everything drags.

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- More from Robert Ham

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