Alrighty, I’ll be the first to admit that I’m coming to the table with a review for Janelle Monae’s debut ‘The Archandroid’ a little late but as the saying goes better late than never and in fairness it wouldn’t matter if another three months went by and I had to write something, this would more than likely be one of the most impressive debut albums of 2010.

There have been many descriptions of Monae that seem to include the phrase ‘eccentric’ or ‘oddball’ and granted on the surface there might be some credence to back up such claims but in all honesty I think it would be more appropriate to call her ‘imaginative’ ‘varied’, ‘focused’ rather than just rely on the screwball descriptive.

The album is to some degree a concept piece (no…wait, don’t run!), cop the Metropolis science fiction sleeve and the liner notes which allude to a world of the future and you’ve got your narrative frame, everything that happens from now on will happen within its borders.

And boy does a lot go on.

Imagine if you took Mozart, ELO, James Brown, Parliament/Funkadelic, Earth Wind & Fire,The Smiths, The Cramps, Leonard Bernstein, Motown, The Beatles, Pink Floyd…for starters. Now sling them in a giant melting pot. Diffuse the key elements that give them their musical status, extract it and inject it into a five foot American and you kind of have an idea where Janelle is coming from (or perhaps not).

You get the impression she’s a musically well travelled individual because she swoops and leaps from genre to genre effortlessly and with a confidence and conviction that many others don’t achieve until they are say, five albums into their career. Armed with a voice that shows enough restraint to handle the gentler material (‘Oh Maker’ where she takes on the aforementioned shades of Morrissey) or coming on with a strident soulful confidence that sounds fresh from 1968 on tracks like ‘Faster’.

Then of course there are orchestral suites (no really, I’m not taking the piss there’s every kind of music on here…well, almost). There are a couple of very competently scored short orchestral pieces slung in here for good measure. At times it is almost like she’s overloaded with ideas and they’re leaking out with a profusion akin to some weird kind of creative…er…sweat.

I mean, I’m listening again now and the morose lament of ‘Sir Greendown’ sounds like it’s taken from some obscure early seventies film soundtrack. Then suddenly she backflips into the year 2010 and we’ve got the pristine modern pop punch of ‘Cold War’. Mate, its fucking mental!

I could of course go on and on, pass me a track and I’ll find where its been lovingly referenced (although you may or may not agree on my point of origin but it doesn’t matter) but needless to say this album has to be in your collection. If you ain’t got it, get it. Wonderfully written and produced, original and clever. Wow!