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Life in Cartoon Motion by Casablanca List Price: $10.99 Unavailable for purchase at this time

Fun, smart, musically adventurous and thematically provocative, the songs on Life In Cartoon Motion, all of them written and produced by Mika, combine euphoric rushes of melody with darker unexpected elements. They range from bright daytime melodramas to night-time tales of love, loss, abandonment, hope and happiness. Each is a splendid blend of fresh imagination and deft pop craftsmanship.

Album gems such as "Grace Kelly," "Lollipop," Billy Brown," and "Relax And Take It Easy," display Mika's innovative wordplay. `I've always respected people who make great records to their own vision,' writes the quixotic Mika. Mission accomplished!

The pop world might be all cooing 'n' cross-eyed over this flamboyant elfin with extended tail-feathers, as if it were shaken suddenly from a slumber, but the arrival of such a character was in fact always inevitable. He's an unlikely but traceable amalgamation of random pop culture explosions from the past few years--two parts Paulo Nutini, one part Kemal from Big Brother, a dash of Daphne & Celeste, a barrel measure of Scissor Sisters, and another pinch of post-ironic dancing to Elton John at the Students' Union gone midnight. It's no secret that the UK has a weakness for pretty-boy singer songwriters either--he fits in there too, in that he's about to stick its index finger in the socket and pour it a drink.

Give it 12 months and you might be taking out a restraining order--Mika will split opinion--but his quasi-soul falsetto is unbelievable, that much is immediately obvious. There are moments nearing syrupy Feeling-esque normalcy (take "My Interpretation"), but those aside it's high camp insatiability all the way. There's a hint of Freddie Mercury’s theatricality in the voice, and in "Big Girl" he's even written a modern day "Fat Bottomed Girls". "Lollipop" is Jake Shears leading the Jackson 5, "Love Today" is the missing link between the Bee Gees and Village People and "Relax, Take It Easy" is a chilled Pet Shop Boys in gold lamé. Too cheesy to be a classic, perhaps, but this is just the brand of subversive eccentricity Robbie has failed miserably to achieve over his past few albums. --James Berry

Customer Reviews:
The album gets better and better	Customer Rating: 5 out of 5
I first heard the track "Lollipop" at work on a day when things were not going well, the song lifted up my whole day. Later I looked up MIKA and listened to samples of other tracks. This is usually the point where one discovers an album with one or two "good" tracks and a dozen filler tracks, not so here. It got better and better the more I listened. Musically, the sound does resemble Scissor Sisters, Queen, Harry Nilsson, even a bit of Chicago and Leo Sayer, which is fine because that sound worked in the 1970's and it works now. The cover and insert art is based on work by both MIKA and his sister Yasmine (DaWack). The comprehensive liner notes show that MIKA's sisters Zuleika and Paloma have sung backup on a couple of tracks, and that MIKA is unafraid to use novelties like spoon orchestras in his work. Music critics either love MIKA or love to hate him as an artist, calling his work derivative, calling him a cynic, claim he is exploiting the Penniman family friend Raffa Kobeisi's story on a spoken word track on the CD, etc. Forget about all of it, just go with the music, it's worth it.
MIKA is a new sensation!	Customer Rating: 5 out of 5
I play MIKA'a CD every day and his tunes are very upbeat and happy! I can't wait to get his new CD that I know he is working on currently.
Sweet And Tart	Customer Rating: 4 out of 5
I bought this album as soon as I heard the single "Grace Kelly" - at that time Mika was a huge deal across the pond and he was slowly making his way over to our side of the world. It's no surprise that he did end up making a bit of a splash if even it was based mostly on the hit single "Grace Kelly" with its clever use of keyboards, and minimal music tones, and Mika's falsetto, it is the perfect supplement in the world of Scissor Sisters type pop. The whole album goes on from that catchy opening single including one of my all time favorite songs ever, "Lollipop" which is so sugary and poppy it almost rots your teeth threw the stereo - I want to do music like this. With each subsequent song Mika just reels in more pseudo love problems and rambling gambling beats. Even his attempts at heart felt ballads have a sort of ironic sense to them, is he really serious? is he just having fun? it's all so fun and undaunting it's hard to turn off even after going through the entire CD. He's a little bit Freddie Mercury, a little bit Elton John, so basically he's a little bit Scissor Sisters, but there's so much happening here it's infectious. We'll see how his journey stateside treats him, and whether he can come up with another fun little notch in his belt when he gets around to making that next album.
Very good	Customer Rating: 5 out of 5
I hope that this CD was good, but I never thought that it was enough!!
A little something for everyone.	Customer Rating: 4 out of 5
Mika's debut album, "Life in Cartoon Motion" is one of the more eclectic releases I've heard recently. Mika jumps from genre to genre on every track. From the sing-song school girl chorus of "Lollipop" to the Jason Mraz-esque "My Interpretation" you just can't help but love Mika's catchy pop sound. "Relax, Take It Easy" sounds like it belongs somewhere in "Night at the Roxbury" while "Billy Brown" sounds like it could almost fit somewhere in the Avenue Q soundtrack. "Big Girl (You Are Beautiful)" evokes a dance club from yesteryear, while "Over My Shoulder" sounds like music for a Cirque du Soleil act. Mika even takes on the pop music tradition of recycling the chords from Pachabel's canon in "Happy Ending" (listen close if you don't believe me). Between the powerhouse of sound from producer Greg Wells (who has worked with Jamie Cullum, Jars of Clay, the Deftones, Rufus Wainright, Lindsay Lohan and Hanson), the album's eclecticism and inventive arrangements that feature horns, beats, keyboards, guitars and others, this album is pop gold. And even with the album being so eclectic, Mika's signature energy and piercing falsetto vocals put his signet seal on each cut. The only drawback, is that because the album is so varied in genre, while almost everyone can probably find a song they enjoy, almost everyone can probably find one or more songs they could do without. Personally, I could do without "Happy Ending" and "My Interpretation," and other listeners can probably find their own songs that they could do without. In a nutshell, Mika's got a very strong debut that you really can't make the final judge on just by the single that is floating around. Give the whole album a chance, and pull down the ones that you really like and throw away the rest.