In a world that's rapidly running out of new musical combinations, I can honestly say I've never heard this one before: early Eighties hip-hop crossed with girl-group pop. Sharon Hagopian records as Cannonball Jane when she's not teaching elementary school music classes, and her debut is ten tracks of music history fantasy camp. What if The Shangri-Las dated Run-DMC? What if Sarah Records' early Nineties roster became obsessed with the dirty funk of the SP-1200? It takes Cannonball Jane a mere twenty-nine minutes to convince you of how cool that would actually be. Cheap-o beats and Spectorian production flourishes provide the backdrop, but the glue that holds it together is Hagopian's surprisingly lovely voice, either solo or ethereally multi-tracked. Despite a limited range, she adeptly performs in a variety of guises, from the punky go-go girl of "Hey! Hey! Alright!" to the 4AD balladeer of "The Force of Gravity". Maybe it's time to start believing in genre crossing again.

Splendid