She’s So Powerful

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Irish Voice Entertainment

She’s So Powerful

December 5, 2007

WHEN I interviewed Roisin Murphy a few years ago, she seemed mildly annoyed that I didn’t know her background.

I knew she was born in Arklow, a small town in Co. Wicklow, and was part of the duo known as Moloko, an underground nightclub sensation in the U.K. that produced the novelty hit called “Do You Like My Tight Sweater?”

Little did I know that she was an immortal in the club world. Had I done my homework, I would have discovered that she rivals Kylie and Madonna in the number of female impersonators that study her every move and costume change.

On her new CD, Overpowered, it’s easy to see why the gay community worships at the altar of this disco high priestess.

There are no saint’s bones to be found on this altar, but there are splinters of sinners’ remains in between the tiled mirrored surface if you look hard enough.

Murphy has this husky voice that provides the smoke that blankets the dance floor arrangements of Overpowered, like RuPaul if he went for that final snip. Using circuit boards and bent beats, she sodders a modern disco classic. If C3PO and R2D2 came out (truth be told, they had one foot out of the closet door on Empire Strikes Back), it might sound like Murphy’s music.

She gives her audience exactly what they want. “Tell everybody I’m your baby/tell everybody we’re not fading/tell everybody no ifs or maybes/tell everybody I’m your lady/tell everybody its not changing,” she pleads on “Tell Everybody,” as a chorus of deep robotic man’s voices writhe beneath her.

She sings about “Dear Miami,” which should make “the boys” from South Beach twirl with glee.

On her last disc, Ruby Blue, she constructed a dance album with everything but the kitchen sink. Literally! She made the album in her kitchen, using tea kettle hissing and various domestic appliances that were fed into her producer’s laptop.

On Overpowered, she leaves the housecoat at home, taking her listener through a veritable history of disco music by pairing addictive synthetic hooks with cowbells, chatty funk guitars, and irresistible beats.

According to her blog, the birth of Overpowered began with a personal appearance at 718 Sessions, a live event set up by one of her DJ producers.

You don’t have to be gay to listen to this, of course, but here is a warning to straight men out there — this music “overpowered” me and I booked tickets to a double shot of Wicked and the Rockettes in the disco haze before the music stopped.

I was overpowered, and you will be, too.

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