M.I.A.

Rest assured: No song on this album will evermake its way into the public consciousness. Its first single, “Born Free,”pretends to be a sample of or homage to Suicide’s “Ghost Rider,” but it isalmost indistinguishable from the original, except M.I.A.’s pseudo-politicalkaraoke dropped on top. I wanted to describe its video aesthetic as “Michael Bay meets George Romero,” but thatactually sounds compelling. There’s something to the droning grind of the lasttwo minutes of “Teqkilla,” but, on principle, you kind of have to hate a songwith a name like that.

The consistently irritating factor with MAYAthe one driving what must be themeanest review I’ve ever writtenis that all the gaudiness, tackiness andover-the-topness of M.I.A.’s style used to feel like an artistic choice tocounter the gruesomeness of the subject matter she tackled. Here, the gaudinessjust feels like bad taste, the gruesomeness for shock’s sake. Fortunately, itfeels like M.I.A. is still trying when making the choices that form MAYA. Hopefully, next time around, thesechoices will inform better decisions.