A shame that this summer I didn’t review Dawn Richard’s Armor On EP, an uneven but impressive album-length collection of atmospheric cyberrhythm ‘n’ blues by the star of Diddy-Dirty-Money’s Last Train to Paris. Every song boasts a sampled bit of sound effect to remember it by, often mixed low enough to reproduce that 3 a.m. groove which The Weeknd and Drake have worked with less success: the drums ‘n’ bass loop and tinkling glass in “Black Lipstick,” the toy piano/marimba swirl at the beginning of “Change,” the Middle Eastern strings in “Scripture.” Richard prefers the confession, the entreaty, the plea, all of which producer Druski maximizes by multitracking her vocals whenever possible. Her lyrics suggest more than delineate. The best refrain: the weary “Things ain’t changed, ain’t changed, they still the same” in “Change.” The best: the picture-perfect Stepford wife confession: “Sorry if you think, if you think I’m automatic/Fucking with the wrong toy/no batteries included” from “Automatic,” in which Richard rushes through the words as if afraid she might pay for them.
