A Musical Reflection of Your LightMalanna Monroe
A Musical Reflection of Your Light
Self Released, 2010
myspace.com/malanna

Reviewed by Kent Manthie

Hailing from Tennessee, USA, but with stops along the way in Detroit and Louisiana. Her new CD, a refreshing little DIY thing called A Musical Reflection of Your Light, is out now and a generous sampling of some tunes from it are on her MySpace page.
I wasn’t sure what to expect before I listened to the songs – would it be bubble gum pop? An obvious puppet of record company Mafia Nazis, but I was pleasantly surprised to discover an independent minded and talented songwriter who happens to be quite lovely and has an equally lovely voice.
The music, as described by Malanna on her MySpace profile page reads “Pop/Powerpop/Rock”, which I guess is not a wrong description. But I don’t think I’d really label it “Rock” – it’s more laid back, pop music and being from the country music hub, those influences obviously – consciously or otherwise – rub off on her. But if it’s not country, not rock and sorta pop, what is it? I’d stick with the “pop” label because that’s a wide ranging label – this isn’t anything experimental or groundbreaking or iconoclastic, but it’s a twist on the typical female pop stars style that most people are used to – Britney Spears and that ilk. Malanna is more mature, smarter and seems to not care if she gets her picture in People or Entertainment Weekly.
Songs I’d recommend as good samples are: “Crazy World”, “Break Free” and “Wanna Know How I Feel”. Unfortnately, a couple songs sounded almost like they were spewing Christian-tinged dogma around, like a stuffed bunny, but one can forgive the innocent religious delusions. She’s still young. But seriously, the words are really incidental to me, I pay attention more to how the voice sounds qua voice, not exactly what the lyrics are saying, although sometimes that is a major part of it. You have to balance the good and the negative and see how it ends up weighing…in this case it passed the test and I say – right on! It never hurts to just jump into something totally new – in fact it’s often refreshing, like jumping into the ocean on a hot day – you get a chill for an instant and then the water feels so great; that’s the best analogy I can think of – hope it works for you.
-KM

Leave a Reply