Nara - Serenity [Album]

Eslamaphobic Music

August 21, 2009, 04:05 PM

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A glance at the album cover and Nara shows a more than healthy resemblance to a cross between the Brittany Murphy from “8 Mile” and the Gwen Stefani from the No Doubt era. So we can safely assume that we will be getting egdy, pop inspired, culturally aware indie rock music. Am I right? Well almost.

Nara bases herself between Lebanon and Geneva. A far cry from the Hollywood inspiration of the two aforementioned artists! Serenity is Nara’s debut album, and a relatively accomplished piece of work it is. The opening track 'I AM' has a wonderful starting line “man must fight wars with music” that evokes images of violin clad US troops battering their enemies to death with Horse Hair whips, well kind of.

It is hard to categorize "Serenity", or Nara for that matter. It is obvious that Nara has many influences, namely Flamenco, Soul, Pop, Hip Hop, Electro House and Vocal French House. Nara has managed to merge these disparate influences into a collective and coherent whole so a nod should go out to both Nara, and her producers.

On from the Morcheeba esque opener 'I AM', Nara moves on to the more Madonna esque 'Soul Food' which, with its synthesized bass, digitised turntable scratching, house beat and euphoric breakdown evokes feelings of a pleasant beach time summer song. In fact, there is a strong influence of a clubby house feel underlying the whole of the “Serenity” album which is not a bad thing at all. The problem lies really when Nara feels the need to sing about things that are, in reality, not that important. The kind of lines like “1,2,3,4, that’s the rhythm” and “move to the music, let it take you over” or something of that sort makes the listener think, that perhaps, “Serenity” lacks a little depth.

There are however some stand out moments on “Serenity”. When Nara sings the songs that are meaningful and more personal than the generic “club house” song we start to get a feeling for the emotion and wit that lies inside Nara. Track eight 'Virtual Love' is a clever little song about internet dating with a gem of a line, “we’ll be together eternally, in this digital story” and features more than a nod to Lil Louis’ House anthem 'French Kiss'.

Track Ten, 'Patience' is an acoustically inspired ballad, with a strong Gospel feel to it. In fact throughout “Serenity” Nara sings some nice vocal harmonies with herself. Nara's voice is strong and the production of her tracks are good. The only thing that lets her down is her differing subject matter. The times when she sings with depth and emotion, Nara starts to stand out from the crowd. When Nara attempts to sound like a Middle Eastern inspired Cascada, she kind of misses the point. In my book anyway.

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