By Jonathan Reyes
While the curse that seems to haunt the
females that surround Beyonce was seemingly lifted by Solange’s sophomore
effort, the “other” Destiny’s Child member Michelle Williams picked a good time
to conjure up her first mainstream project. Instead of continuing with
Gospel releases, Michelle tackled the world of Club/Dance with
Unexpected. Maybe in an effort to stay out of Beyonce’s way completely,
the Euro-pop album is less Nelly Furtado and more Kylie Minogue.
Vocally, Michelle has always demonstrated
greater skills than fellow group member Kelly. Here, she shows spurts
of that vocal superiority in the ballads “The Greatest,” “Too
Young For Love,” and “Stop This Car.” In others (“Till The End
of the World,” “Private Party”) she gets by on focusing on the
beat without and a lot of Auto-Tune.
What makes the album as a whole a bit
hard to grasp is that Michelle doesn’t have a voice built for this
particular Pop sub-genre. “Her voice would have been easy to overlook
if those club tempo songs were crafted particularly well but they are
only memorable after numerous listens.
The issues may go beyond her voice to
the core of the project as it may be hard for some to party to music
from someone who has recorded two gospel albums and the standout moments
still lie in her slow tracks. In terms of a Destiny’s Child solo effort,
though, Michelle came out over Beyonce’s other back-up singer by actually
crafting a memorable project, even if it takes a couple of listens to
sink in.