For all of the
fuss it caused, the scattershot
My December just happens to be Kelly Clarkson's best album to date. Perhaps the biggest upgrade Clarkson's style has undergone is the retirement of the soulless adult contemporary ballads that littered her previous two albums. They've been replaced with acoustic tracks that are both more organic and more believable. Also impressive is the unprocessed quality that has been preserved in Clarkson's vocals, wrapping
My December in another layer of authenticity by allowing her to sound raw and live. It's a breath of fresh air to hear a mainstream marketed album that doesn't simultaneously serve as an auto-tune commercial. Slow burning ballads "Sober" and "Maybe" take their time to build and the payoff each delivers is outstanding, while the sparse and surprisingly underproduced closing tracks "Irvine" and "Chivas" offer two of the album's finest moments. Sure, when one album finds the artist wanting to be everyone from Patty Griffin to Amy Lee to Gwen Stefani, it can feel like a bit of an identity crisis. But the spunky No Doubt-esque, trophy wife-decrying "How I Feel," the brassy sing-along "Yeah" and the tormented "Haunted," which apes Evanescence right down to the title, prove Clarkson had little concern for crafting a cohesive sound. Less an album and more an exorcism,
My December isn't a marvel, but more works than doesn't. Besides, how can you not like someone who releases a five-minute chorusless ballad as their second radio single?
