Tove Lo has successfully built up enough buzz around her music and her brand over the past year that the release of her debut album feels more more like an overdue appointment than a surprise party. For rising stars, this is the best possible situation to be in, and while it may seem that we've been hearing a lot of her on mainstream radio and on a lot of the bigger online music outlets, there's no arguing that her team has done a great job getting her word out and capitalizing on her knack for making quality pop music to the fullest. This release has been a while in the making, without question, but it finally feels like Tove Lo is ready to make her debut onto pop's main stage, and the music on Queen of the Clouds is more than enough to legitimize her rise to superstardom. The album is a veritable treasure trove of hits, and while we're a little bit surprised at the consistency of the track list given her knack for left-of-center sounds, we're not complaining at all, because as far as we're concerned, she's got enough talent to fill more than a couple of albums with the stuff. While there's definitely a very defined sound here, she's honed her craft to such a fine edge, that this feels more like an in-depth genre study than the work of somebody who was afraid to color outside the lines. Simply put, Tove Lo has pretty much mastered contemporary pop music for the time being, and this album is proof of that. It's got all the relevant sub-genre influences that are necessary to be ahead of the curve, and she folds them in with a subtlety and an artistry that will make you wonder how she does it. There are a couple songs here that have already made the rounds on both the airwaves and in the blog community, so tracks like "Habits (Stay High)", "Not On Drugs", and "Out of Mind" shouldn't come as any sort of surprise, but what will is the way they interact with the other, fresher offerings. Not only do they fit in seamlessly with the other music, but they also don't necessarily scream "single material" when stacked up against the rest of the album. That's not to say they aren't as good as the rest, but her other work is just so strong and catchy that any one of these songs could have easily generated just as much buzz for this Swedish phenom. She could have very easily just left her single release selection to chance and pinned up all the names of each song on a dart board with equal success. With the aforementioned thoughts in mind, it's rather difficult for us to pick out standout tracks. "My Gun" is absolutely killer, but so is "Moments" and "Got Love". All of them have a smooth, rolling, pace that lopes along with an effortless gait, and the fact makes the listening experience melt into one long sonic journey where you're never on edge, but you're never bored, either. It's almost like Tove's turned pop music into easy listening by making all the moving parts so seamless and refined. From the outlined efforts, you'll want to move into "Talking Body" and "Thousand Miles", and though they're a bit more on the fringe of what she's doing, they're still miles ahead of most of her contemporaries right now. There are no deep cuts on this album, we should add, and we wouldn't be surprised if she pulls a Katy Perry and squeezes out a new hit single from this album every couple months until almost every song has gotten the full mainstream FM rotation treatment. Tove Lo is just getting started, it seems, and this album is just the beginning of a very long pop career. From here, she could go pretty much anywhere sonically, and now that she has such a solid foundation to work off of in Queen of the Clouds, it's pretty much a given that her sophomore effort is gong to be just as accomplished. Queen of the Clouds is available on iTunes now.
Tove Lo