What – apart from successful pop careers – do Rihanna, Florence Welch, Mary J Blige, Ellie Goulding, Sophie Ellis Bextor, Cheryl Cole, Kylie, Ke$ha and Kelis have in common? All have stepped into Calvin Harris’s studio harem and emerged with a hit collaboration of some description.
And that’s just the girls. To that list of musical movers and shakers, you can also add Dizzee Rascal, Tinie Tempah, Example and Ne-Yo. And that’s just his guests on this new album.
Harris once claimed he had a list of about 200 people (“dead and alive”) that he would like to work with. It would be fair to say that he has subsequently managed to tick a couple of names off that list.
By his own admission, the guiding principle behind his third album was to “go for it and see how many people I could get on one record”. The problem with 18 Months is not that there are too many cooks, but that the head chef has run out of tasty recipes.
However, Harris didn’t get where he is today – sitting pretty as one of the world’s top DJ/producers, right up there with Tiesto and David Guetta – through originality. The Dumfries bedroom DJ-turned-hit machine is an unashamedly commercial operator.
As his chart career has taken off and assumed juggernaut proportions, he increasingly cleaves to a formula, churning out mindless hands-in-the-air rave pop with self-referential lyrics about crass celebrity partying, communion on the dancefloor and general let’s-get-out-of-it escapism which has come to define the sound of today’s singles chart. Ergo, Calvin Harris is the Stock Aitken Waterman of 2012, with all the production- line prejudice that engenders.
Another reason why 18 Months sounds so brain-rottingly familiar is the sheer number of tracks which have already been released, either as singles by Harris or his featured artist. Count it up, and you’ll find that almost half the album is already in the public domain. 18 Months is practically a greatest hits collection before it has even been released.
Of these singles, the Rihanna hit We Found Love has been the most pervasive. Boasting one melodic hook and a purely functional rave backing, its success is testament to the pulling power of the jingle or ringtone as a song substitute. Operating with a similar lack of sophistication, Bounce boasts a cheeky arcade game-style synth hook and a nice, husky vocal from Kelis, though it’s hardly a stretch of her talents. Like all of Harris’s best material, it is eminently throwaway but nevertheless hard to resist.
Harris himself fronts Feel So Close, delivering a vocal which is as passable as any on the album, and is easily a match for Example’s equally monotonous style on cheesy banger We’ll Be Coming Back. But Harris is shrewd enough to understand that he would not be where he is now if he chose to go it alone, or use session singers or sampled vocals. Harris has a symbiotic relationship with his guest vocalists: they get a guaranteed hit, while he enjoys some celebrity by association – even if very little of their stardust ultimately rubs off on him.
In terms of lending his music some personality, he fares a little better in collaboration with rappers Tinie Tempah and Dizzee Rascal, whose vocal presence jumps out of the recording, even if their respective tracks, Drinking From The Bottle and Here 2 China, add nothing to the musical template.
The album is scattered with a few brief instrumentals that sound like the product of idle studio tinkering. None are developed to any great degree but they provide interesting snapshots of what Harris might get up to if all those pop stars would stop pestering him to write them another surefire chart-topper.
He limbers up with the oceanic synth wash and leisurely bassline of Green Valley, which sounds more chill-out than warm-up, while the west coast electro funk of School is arguably the most soulful interlude on the album. Harris takes the opportunity to deliver a bit more meat on funky club instrumental Mansion, whose Daft Punk influence extends through to the following track Iron. This dubstep-driven number, produced in cahoots with Dutch DJ Nicky Romero, is the only track to muster any rocking welly (stop me if I’m getting too technical), which is a sore disappointment, especially coming off the back of 18 Months’ playful predecessor Ready For The Weekend.
Harris can hardly be blamed for surfing a wave until it breaks, but I don’t accept for a minute that this is all he is good for or capable of. Rather than stretching himself thin over so many collaborations, he could try stretching himself compositionally instead.
CALVIN HARRIS: 18 MONTHS
COLUMBIA, £12.99
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