Send "Me'Shell NdegéOcello " Ringtones to your Cell 
| Popmatters |
 Not So BitterAmazon Lala Intense. That’s always the first word that comes to mind when anyone mentions Meshell Ndegeocello. Her music eschews sentiment for emotion. There’s a stark acceptance that life is rough, passionate, trying, and beautiful in Ndegeocello’s work. She never shies away from how heavy and messy human emotion can be. So it’s somewhat refreshing that on her 8th album, Devil’s Halo, she opens up a bit and embraces humor and lighter moments. It would seem that on this album, Ndegeocello is less concerned with how emotion strikes a person (be it love, pain, or sex), but how people relate to that emotion. And in the process she creates the tightest, most emotionally potent work she’s produced since Bitter. Ndegeocello’s emotionally mature perspective here is striking in its simplicity. As the album title suggests, she takes the good with the bad. On the opening track, “Slaughter”, she says “My love will lead you to slaughter / If you see it coming I’d run the other way / I’m the spawn of a sick mother”. The song, with its alternating melodic plea and raucous funk, is a beautiful acknowledgement that you often run from love because it can be all-consuming and destructive. In that way, it is a love song, but a more realistic one. A few tracks later, on “Lola”, she brilliantly deconstructs the comfort and stability that relationships and marriage are supposed to provide, and questions why anyone would even want such things (“everyone thinks they’re so fuckin special”)....full text |
| Allmusic |
| On three of her last four recordings, Me'Shell Ndegéocello has showcased her aesthetic restlessness, expanding her musical horizons to jazz, hip-hop, and the far-flung reaches of rock as well as funk and soul. On Devil's Halo, she focuses her vision deliberately on a dozen soulish, near-pop, rock tunes. Recorded by S. Husky Höskulds, it's stark compared to her last three albums. Ndegéocello plays bass and sings backed by guitarist Chris Bruce, drummer Deantoni Parks, and keyboardist Keith Ciancia, with guest appearances by Oren Bloedow, and Lisa Germano. Desire haunts all the songs on Devil's Halo, beginning with "Slaughter," its opening track. Ndegéocello sings slowly, softly, deliberately, without a hint of irony: "She said she loved me/I ran away/ Don't say you love me/I'll run away..." The refrain explodes with guitars, bass, and vocals in a shattering crescendo: "...My love will leave you slaughter..." Romance, substance abuse, and one woman speaking candidly to another are themes in this musical meditation on bliss, lust, loneliness, and emotional wreckage, which are inseparable when the amorous is even considered, at least in Ndegéocello's world. "Lola" begins with the lines: "She drinks until she passes out/on the floor..." then erupts with a series of double-timed breaks to underscore confusion: "The boy she loved/left her for another girl/The girl she loved/left her for another boy..." A staccato explosion from Bruce's guitar engages her bassline in an instrumental bridge that Frank Zappa would have loved. "Mass Transit" is funkier, a bit more aggressive from the outset with Bruce's guitar leading the way, though Ndegéocello's bassline offers an alternate read on both melody and rhythmic pulse. Her voice is a soft croon despite the music's aggression, and it keeps the tune grounded in the seductive. "White Girl" may be the straightest pop song Ndegéocello's ever written, but its bassline is strictly dubwise. The vocals are smoky and elliptical, they create their own chorus in reverb and in the singer's deliberately stretched-out phrase, all around a very simple, hooky melody. The title track is a nearly ambient instrumental, with Ndegéocello playing harmonics on her bass in the mix just underneath a snare and kick drum barely outlining the time signature. Bruce paints it gingerly with his chord voicings. "A Bright Shiny Morning" is a gorgeous if lithe rocker, while "Blood on the Curb" is a more soulful, spacy rockist number with Ndegéocello's voice barely crooning above the heavyweight instrumentation, though she practices dynamic restraint. The album ends with another ballad, the brief but startling "Crying in Your Beer" with Bruce playing a spidery banjo as well as guitar atop Ciancia's ghostly keyboards and a skeletal bassline. It's an atmospheric tune, made taut by the words: " Sometimes, I forget where we are/Sometimes, I forget we're in love/Don't let me/die alone...."...full text |
| Billboard |
| T hough not as sprawlingly ambitious or experimental as the 2007 "The World Has Made Me the Man of My Dreams," Meshell Ndegeocello's eighth release, "Devil's Halo," neatly straddles a line between challenging and accessible, with some of the tightest and catchiest compositions she's yet brought forth. Listeners might not get that from the opening song, "Slaughter," which moves from liquid-like verses to crash-bang choruses with a Radiohead-style prog vibe, but tracks like "Mass Transit" and "Blood on the Curb" channel melodic, if slightly subversive, new wave influences-and the Pretenders' Chrissie Hynde would pay large for the leathery attitude of "Lola." Ndegeocello lays jazz overtones atop of "White Girl," old-school synthesizers through "Die Young" and brings out front-porch Americana for "Crying in Your Beer." She also uses a big beat and subtle dissonance to turn Melvin Riley's "Love You Down" into a Joni Mitchell-flavored tone poem. "I transform myself for maximum attraction," Ndegeocello sings in "Mass Transit." It works. --Gary Graff...full text |
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