I Am...reviewing 'I Am...Sasha Fierce'

From the soaring and anthemic heights of the sublime If I Were a Boy to the handclap-laden slice of southern sass that is Single Ladies to the thumping, glossy Halo to the electro, Europop-flavoured, dance floor filler Radio to the dreamy and ethereal Disappear to the hard-edged, janky, crunk-infused snarl of Diva and so on. I Am...Sasha Fierce takes the listener from sound to sound, from heartfelt and beautifully restrained ballads to beat-driven up-tempo numbers, or at least it would were it not for the maddening two disc presentation of this otherwise slick piece of accomplished and polished R’n’B.

Disc one, I Am... is wall to wall heartfelt ballads and one after the other their shine is dulled. The up-tempo jams of the second disc (Credited to B’s draggish alter-ego, Sasha Fierce) seem rather vacuous when presented consecutively but when interspersed with one another, disc two acts as the perfect edgy yan to the first dics emotional yin. Another irksome factor is the presence of a deluxe edition; the first disc is only further bloated by the dull and somewhat bizarre Smash into You and the sleep-inducing That’s Why You’re Beautiful. The deluxe additions on disc two are more successful in adding a little variation in the form of the brassy (instrumentally and lyrically) Ego and the emotional Scared of Lonely.

Aside from the gimmicky double disc concept and the largely superfluous deluxe edition tracks this is an impressive third effort from Ms. Knowles-Z, her restrained but powerful vocals are consistently dazzling on the ballads and sassy on the up-tempo tracks. However, some of her lyrics can be a mixed bag from trite affirmations of love (On Hello, a deluxe track, she coos ‘You had me at hello’) and the plain odd (‘I wanna run, smash into you’? Again, a deluxe offering). Elsewhere, there are some lovely tales of love to be found here. The dance tracks don’t break new ground and some are total eyebrow-raisers (She brags that ‘It’s too big, too wide... it won’t fit’ in Ego; you guessed it, a deluxe edition track.)

This Sasha Fierce woman doesn’t appear to be all that different from the Beyoncé that brought us saucy treats such Baby Boy and Naughty Girl or the more ghetto Upgrade U so why she was dragged out for her very own disc is a mystery. Where’s the fun in confining the two major sounds of this album to separate discs? To borrow a philosophy from an American confection, what’s wrong with getting a little chocolate in your peanut butter?