Freshman year rocks. Everything is new-fangled and exciting, and even those 8 a.m. recitations don't seem so bad, because for the first time in your inconsequential existence, you're living on your own, man, by your own terms, so if you want to eat pizza for breakfast, more power to you.
Sophomore year, on the other hand, can get kind of beat.
Sophomore slump isn't some recent discovery. College kids hit it and slaughter their GPAs. Musicians hit it and sink into either obscurity or the pop culture repertoire of ridicule.
Three years ago, Nelly Furtado flew like a bird onto pop charts with the Grammy-winning album Whoa, Nelly! With Folklore, Furtado is back in action with something to prove.
Despite Furtado's opening track claim that she's not a "one-trick pony," Folklore is that archetypal second album, taking itself a bit too seriously with the exploited rock star angst and general imitation of the first disc's innovative precocity.
We all know the spin by now: Furtado fuses her Portuguese roots with R&B and alt-rock influences to generate an accessible but eclectic hip-hop-pop sound.
While Whoa, Nelly! was a quirky surprise, Folklore is more of a solemn and self-conscious affair. It's not a bad follow-up, but it's nowhere near as catchy, candid or lyrically challenging as Furtado's debut.
Furtado certainly is a creative force to be reckoned with, but Folklore sometimes finds itself too wanna-be mature and self-important. Furtado writes what she knows, but she also writes a lot of generic independent-woman-with-a-soft-side stuff ("Try" and "Picture Perfect"), with most hints of personal narrative sidelined to the album's urban and ethnic instrumentation.
When Furtado hits her lyrical and musical stride, though, she's mesmerizing. Furtado skits and skats and raps and wails through "Explode," which addresses the "teenage waste" of slipping acid, a friend's unreported rape and drinking behind Kmart. Furtado needs to embrace daring songwriting like this, which traipses the edge between hooky and haunting, elucidating Furtado's tough girl guise and upbeat, ironic innocence.
Sometimes that naive multicultural formula works wonders, like on spicy "Fresh Off the Boat" and the stirring, bi-lingual "Força." Other times, it's totally bland and sounds like a funkified Michelle Branch, which isn't horrific, but Furtado has proven herself capable of so much more.
Folklore may be a sophomore slump, but it's definitely not a sophomore failure. Furtado's initial shine may have faded into an intense, if uneven, glow, but the woman hasn't lost the edge that separates her from the bulk of her plastic pop sludge competitors.
