A new Britney Spears album is always an event. First we had Blackout, the big, triumphant return after Britney’s years of troubles... then there was Circus, accompanied by the dazzling spectacle of the live show. And now, come 2011, we have Femme Fatale. With such a pedigree of top quality pop singles behind her, you’d think perhaps that it’d be quite a challenge for Miss Spears to constantly deliver year after year; but going off the quality of Till The World Ends and Hold It Against Me, there’s no fear of her quality ever becoming stifled.
It is these two tracks that open the album, the very ultimate in music to throw shapes to. It’s a relentless one-two punch, a sonic assault on the senses; as good a reminder to the listener that Britney is well and truly back as that classic ‘It’s Britney, bitch.’ Inside Out continues the theme of fractured, restless sexyness that seems to pervade the album, Britney crying out for someone to ‘give me something to remember’. There’s this yearning lust, buried in the twitching electronics and beats, that is almost siren-like in quality – this slow pulse of sensual fusion. Here, Britney is in full-on sexbot mode and we share a chuckle as she proclaims her lover ‘couldn’t last forever’. Quite literally LOL.
How I Roll serves up more of the same, but is a bit more of an acquired taste, full as it is with a variey of vocodered male vocals, weird popping noises and gasps. On one hand, we can applaud Britney for branching out down this more experimental avenue – it’s something new, exciting, exhilarating. Maybe the snipped-to-pieces sound samples are a metaphor for Britney’s life itself, but ultimately, however cut up the songs might sound individually, the final result is what is probably her most consistent album to date. Femme Fatale feels like a proper body of work with a continuous theme and sound running throughout it. Consistency is a problem that was well documented as a long-standing issue with Britney’s albums, but here, that problem is finally resolved.
‘You can be my fuck tonight...’ she teases on How I Roll. Straight to the point then. I Wanna Go is playful too, full of low-slung basslines and perhaps the best use of whistling in a song in a long time. For me though, the true album highlight and best candidate for third single comes in Drop Dead Beautiful though. The first thing that strikes you here is ‘Oh, it’s Britney doing Gaga’s sound!’, and to a degree it does represent a very post-Gaga Britney sound. It is exactly the kind of funky electro-disco glam that Gaga perfected, but then you remember that as the original Princess of Pop, it’s people like Britney which helped carve open the way for people like Gaga. And Britney is still more than capable of holding her own.
Big Fat Bass is another highlight; featuring Will.I.Am, it dabbles in 90s acid house piano as well as doing pretty much what is says on the tin by giving us lots and lots of ‘big fat bass’. And if you want to take that as a not so subtle euphemism for cock size, well, that’s up to the listener. It’s perhaps the least ‘traditional’ Britney song here; again, more experimental in nature, but never so much so that it becomes alienating. It is important to remember that in many respects, this is Britney’s ‘club record’. She’s always been dancey, but never as openly so as here. Every track on the album is custom-built for the dance-floor – an out and out four to the floor moment.
That is, with the one exception of Criminal. It would be easy to dismiss the track as the album’s token ballad, tacked hastily on the end; but full of folky acoustic guitar, it actually feels surprisingly heartfelt. Sure, it’s no Everytime, but then, what is?
Special mention has to go to the gorgeous packaging of the deluxe edition of the album too; it’s impossibly glossy, featuring fancy gold lettering and a selection of artwork cards too. It also gives you a number of bonus tracks, of which Don’t Keep Me Waiting - a bit of Wake Me Up style synth-laced rock - is by far the best.
