M.I.A.
Arular

A tornado, a torment, a cyclone, this “Arular” by the young Sri Lankan M.I.A. is a fresh and new bomb that resonates in the banality of today's music that surrounds us. I've asked myself more than once, since the day I bought the album, how so much creativity can be gathered in the same person, and how it can manage to unleash itself throughout all the 13 tracks of the album, without ever falling into repetition, without the sound having any falter, and without M.I.A.'s "angry" words stopping hammering your brain.

Listening to this record is like entering M.I.A.'s house, in the suburban district of London, Acton (in fact M.I.A. stands for Missing In Acton) where the young girl had to take refuge with her family, when her father, a militant of a Tamil group, had to flee first to Sri Lanka, then India, and finally to London to save his family, and see with your own eyes all the fears and tensions the girl had to endure since childhood. Indeed, listening to “Arular” is like eating a whole lemon at six in the morning, when the mouth is still completely dry, and the nerves totally relaxed, and then feel that acidity mixed with anger growing inside you, and then everything becomes clearer and simpler, we must shout and fight to change things. And M.I.A. does it with music. In fact, the lyrics talk about war, terrorism, prostitution, and drugs, not to mention the struggles between young people of different cultures in London, racism, and weapons, and the most incredible thing is the awareness and coldness with which this barely twenty-year-old girl talks about it. Take for example the refrain of “Bucky Done Gun”: “They're coming through the window / They're coming through the door / They're busting down the big wall / and Sounding the horn”. Those things that come through the walls and windows and knock down the walls are the bombs that M.I.A. had to get used to since she was little, but now she is tired of conforming to a cynical and selfish system, and she wants to make her voice heard.

If through the lyrics M.I.A. expresses herself perfectly and freely, musically she does even more, raised on bread, water, and Public Enemy, the girl loves hip hop, but not the shiny kind like Eminem and 50 Cent, but the raw and powerful one, and not commercialized, mixed with practically everything, from the essential minimalism of “SunShower”, where the voice and protest sound above all and everyone, to the dizzying rhythms that leave you breathless, that suck your blood, of "Pull Up The People" or "Galang", or the "panty-ripping" chorus of “hombre”, where a thousand voices unite, cross, break and fight, “Bingo” is raw and pure energy, even though M.I.A.'s voice is not the pinnacle of pitch, the song takes on the form of a hymn to dance and protest. I can't even define such work in a musical genre; it's the sum of everything, projected into the already well-developed personality of the girl, without any filter that doesn't allow you to see things 100%. Take for instance “Amazon”, a song that talks about revolution, the desire to change the system, all this on a base intertwined between the most eccentric world music, and the most compelling beats, on a riff of words heavy as bombs, and bullets straight to the heart. It is, in fact, on the beats and the lyrics that Arular knows how to leave you speechless, bombs, guns, distortions, screams, and finally inside your head enter a thousand noises, that leave you panting and breathless, but also happy and free, just like her.

In short, I strongly recommend it to you, it's something new and original, or at least it tries to be, and then it introduces us to a personality like M.I.A.'s, and frankly, we need personalities like hers to inspire us.