Mandi Perkins

There's something to be said for reliability and consistency in songwriting, but the downside to so faithfully toeing the line is a repetitive samey-ness, and that's unfortunately the case with Mandi Perkins. The Canadian-by-birth, Los-Angelena-by-choice rocker slings out 13 tracks of relationship woes on Alice in No Man's Land, her debut full-length album. The rule more often than not holds that the songs Perkins performs start out quiet, suggesting a checked aggression, which is then unleashed at about the 45-second or one-minute mark on each song, when much of the noise drops out for a second, and then a chorus packed with melodic rock guitars (or sometimes a piano) comes in all crashy and forceful. It's a fine trick once or twice–it worked to great effect on Kelly Clarkson's "Since U Been Gone". In this case, it's not as effective as one might hope. It seems like Perkins decided to pack 13 potential singles onto a disc in the hope that one might ring true with listeners.

The songs on Alice in No Man’s Land come from a variety of songwriters, so it's not even that Perkins' songwriting is dull, it's that the taste is one-note. Perkins' strength is her emphatic delivery, and Alice in No Man's Land could serve as a fourth-generation Jagged Little Pill clone. Making pervasive negativity throughout songs like "Broken Window," "I Fall Down" and "Why (You Confuse Me)" a focal point of the album is a brave move; if only the songwriting's delivery were as risky. The great thing about writing a song is you can choose to do anything–literally anything–while writing it; why choose such a creatively bereft path?

—Chris Hassiotis
08.21.08