Mariah Carey Connection

Rating: 2.5 Stars (Out of 4)

The title of Mariah Carey’s 12th album portends an unrealized complexity. With no high-profile guests, little vocal gymnastics and use of the same producers – Christopher “Tricky” Stewart and Terius “The Dream” Nash – throughout, this is as fuss-free an album the native New Yorker has made in her 19-year recording career.

It’s not completely without cheese: there’s an unnecessary gospel choir on the Foreigner cover “I Want to Know What Love Is” and equally unnecessary dashes of Auto-Tune here and there.

The weightiness shows up in the romantic drama that’s explored throughout; worthy enough for Barbara Walters, Oprah Winfrey, Maury Povich and the “Harvard University graduating class of 2010,” all of whom Carey namechecks.

The lyrics she co-writes are a mixed bag: impressive on “Angels Cry” the disc’s most mature and fulfilling tune – “We treated love like a sport/The final blow hit so hard/I’m still on the ground” – but, mostly of the inane – “It’s not chipped/We’re not cracked/Oh, we’re shattered” (”Up Out My Face”) – variety.

Vocally, she’s doing a lot of the breathless, cooing Janet Jackson thing. She dedicates the wordlesss minute-long “Angel (The Prelude)” to her whistle-like highest octave, as if to show that she can still hit it, but chooses not to.

With fewer danceworthy beats than recent discs and the monotonous song-to-song similarity, this winds up being a tepid, R&B lite effort that falls short of Carey’s claim that “I’m the same Mimi/Butterfly flow like Muhammad Ali” (”Candy Bling”).

Top Track: “The Impossible” is a midtempo romp with a fun-filled “My Favourites Things” comparison of what she loves as much as her mate: bubble baths on the jet, Duncan Hines yellow cake, free money, etc.

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Source: The Toronto Star