0016998125724. New condition. CD. Picture Uma Thurman channeling Billie Holiday, accompanied by up-to-the-minute techno beats, and you'll have a fairly accurate mental image of this unusual Icelandic act. Moa is a singer and songwriter, and on her solo debut she's aided and abetted by cellist-turned-punk-rocker Eythor Arnalds (with whom she's recorded previously under the name Bong) and programmer Bjarki, who have created an electronic environment for her singing that is by turns chilly and warm, one in which dour house beats and bleepy analog synth can suddenly be swept up into blissful, string-filled choruses (as on "Raining in My Heart"). Moa's singing is quite unusual -- she's got Billie Holiday's acute nasality and exaggerated vibrato down pat, but she's also capable of a more conventional crooning style. Her lyrics don't generally rise above mediocre, and it's mainly due to lapses of idiom-lines like "If you walk out this door, on your freeway once more/I've told you before, it's your unwritten page" will leave you wishing she'd had a native English speaker edit her lyric sheets. But the lyrics are more or less incidental; what count are the atmosphere, the beats, and the singing, all of which are pretty compelling. ~ Rick Anderson, Rovi
