Becstasy

You have to give Becky Baeling and her people credit for titling her debut Becstasy. It's the kind of impossibly hokey pun that's successful by nature of its obviousness, like a bikini-clad white elephant emerging from behind a nightclub smoke machine. Of course, the album needs such a title, since its artwork is so bland. From Baeling's cheesecake pose to the generic typefaces, Becstasy does little to distinguish itself from the hundreds of fly-by-night house and dance compilations selling themselves with sexy cover stars. When you're an international diva like Kylie Minogue, you can pose for a generic cover. But the largely unknown Baeling might have opted for something more unique, and in doing so nixed the misguided "Diva." (Her tepid, too-typical Euro-house remix of Belinda Carlisle's already watery "Heaven Is a Place on Earth" probably should have been axed, too.) Luckily, Minogue's diva-ness isn't the only thing Baeling likes about her, as there's quite a bit of Kylie's sexy grit here, too. The catchy disco update "If You Love Me" relies on a Fever-ish bottom-end thump, while "Getaway" mixes an insistent four-four beat with guitar samples, shimmery keys, and Baeling's own energetic if unremarkable singing. "I've been watchin' you/Do you feel it too?" Yes, it's the usual simplistic dancefloor phraseology throughout Becstasy, which means that either the beats or Becs herself needs to chip in with some discernible energy. While "Without Love"'s faint trance overtones are successful, it's "All Over Me"'s dry production, funky, vintage-sounding instrumentation, and sassy vocal that make it the album standout. Together with "If You Love Me" (already a single during summer 2003), "All Over Me" proves that Becky Baeling has the energy and ability to back up her album's titular creativity, even if she gets a bit lost in this debut's wash of same-y beats, generically sultry packaging, and simplistic lyrics (simplistic even for the club/dance genre, that is). The album closes with an uneventful remix of "If You Love Me."