Album Review - Colette Carr "Skitszo Part 3"

Here we are again. Two months have already passed since the last installment of Skitszo, and it is again time for my bi-monthly review. cCarr has been pushing this album very hard, and she has an amazing fan base that has been waiting patiently as the time creeps by. This week, part three hit the net, and people are eating it up. Let's take a look -- oh and don't mind my poorly edited album cover.

 

 This part opens up with a straight up rap track called "Can't Touch This." If you have been following my reviews thus far, you can probably expect that this isn't my favorite part. Colette can rap very well, but rap just isn't my thing. The song seemed a bit generic coming from her, as in both being a club track, but also it is a topic she has covered time and time again -- her being totally awesome.

The track features a rapper named E-40, whom I've never heard of before. He has two segments, the first being a rap that over uses the "nizzle" fad from the 90s (isn't that dead for a reason?) and the second is him just saying "homie" a lot. I love Colette, but this song is honestly my least favorite of the Skitszo experience. They can't all be amazing, right?

Luckily my dismay is lifted quickly with the new single "Never Gonna Happen." This song is unlike anything we've heard from her to date. The song has an acoustic mid-2000s sound to it. It is another song that has that true summer feel, being a bit early, but seeing as the album "fully" comes out in July, this is gonna be perfect. Plus, its perpetually summer in California, isn't it? "Never Gonna Happen" is about exactly what it sounds like, Colette letting a guy know they will never be together. I love the exploration of a depressing dead-end relationship through a very upbeat and peppy song. It turns lyrics that could easily be interpreted as hopeless into something uplifting.

 Continuing with her genre exploration, the next song "One By One" catches my attention quickly by heavily featuring guitars. This one is another rap track, but comes across much stronger than "Can't Touch This." The verses are rapped while the chorus is sang. The lyrics aren't explicit on what she is taking down one by one, but I can assume she is alluding that she is taking out the competition. The theme of the album, being that she is very crazy, comes through with the line "but then I can't hear what my mind says", which she starts pleading to the listener at the end. Overall this song is a very fun yet unexpected song to come out of her, drawing back from her roots of "Sex Sells".

The last song, "The Finest Things" is a strange mix of electropop beats with R&B infused lyrics and flow. It continues her odd sense of humor, including her boasting that she can get all the boys (in a much cruder way, of course) without wearing any makeup.

Over all, this is nowhere near the strongest part of Skitszo on the market. This seems to suffer from a lot of Middle-of-the-Album Syndrome. The songs aren't bad, but they aren't single ready. "Never Gonna Happen" which has a video coming out soon, is the closest thing to a single we've seen from this part, but even that is a bit of a stretch to say. I am hoping that cCarr is saving the best for last, giving us all she's got in May.

You can get Part Three of 2013's most promising album on iTunes.