Last update: 23 April 2008
The problem with this question is, of course, the precise definition of "manufactured". "Being manufactured" is usually opposed to "having cred"; thus at one end of the scale are the likes of Led Zeppelin and R.E.M., whose virtually total creative control over their careers earns them almost 100% pure cred; while at the other are, for example, the Spice Girls, who were never more than a front for a very efficient marketing operation aimed at relieving impressionable and undiscriminating young girls of their pocket-money, and thus have no cred at all. Considered in these terms, the question is perhaps better phrased as "how much creative autonomy must a band have before you are allowed to take them seriously?".
Those to whom the answer to this question matters would no doubt have plenty to say about Vanilla Ninja, the first Estonian band to have significant success outside Estonia, pointing to the fact that they haven't actually written that much of the music recorded under their name, the suspicion that they may not actually be playing their instruments onstage, and the improbability of four (or three, or five, depending on how you count them) such good-looking women ending up in the same place at the same time in the way Proper Bands are supposed to. Others might, correctly, counter that it's not fair to dismiss them as a kind of Spice-Girls-with-guitars, that they've had to do much of their musical growing-up in public, that every musical artist is "manufactured" to some degree, and that 100% cred does not necessarily guarantee great music.
More level heads would opine that it's perfectly possible to ignore such questions and enjoy Vanilla Ninja's music for what it is. It's neither particularly original nor likely to change anyone's life, and it can sometimes suffer lapses in comportment typical of music written by, for want of a better word, foreigners; but, as the following reviews set out to argue, there are definitely worse things you could spend your time listening to. Pieces of the band's history are added to provide context; if I have any details wrong, tell me, and I'll be pleased to correct them.
The production is heavy on synthesised and electronically-treated sounds, and is sometimes overly intrusive; it'd be interesting to hear the music arranged for a more conventional guitar-bass-drums lineup. Overall, however, it's actually quite decent, even if Piret's lyrics rarely stray from well-trodden paths like trying to fit in ("Outcast"), self-pride ("Inner Radio", much whose lyric could have been written by Wonderwall, and the very silly "Toxic", with its mentions of "drawing comic characters"), and romantic disappointments (most of the rest). The best songs are at each end of the album proper; thus the expansive music for the opener "Guitar and Old Blue Jeans" works well with the optimistic lyric about escaping a bad relationship for new pastures, and "Polluter" - in which an unfortunate ex is lambasted as "you pathetic fool" - is a gentle and resigned piano ballad. "Why", too, is a good uptempo song with an appropriately questioning lyric.
Three of the songs have lyrics in Estonian, whose unfamiliarity gives "Nagu Rockstaar" and "Purunematu" a beguiling exoticity; the latter in particular is memorable for the drawn-out melody in its chorus. "Klubikuningad", however, is a filler; it's the only song so far on which Katrin does the lead vocal, and she sounds shy and is almost inaudible. After "Polluter", "Guitar and Old Blue Jeans" is reprised almost as effectively in Estonian as "Vana Teksid ja Kitarr" (the way they pronounce "Kitarr" is worth savouring), and conversely "Purunematu" is reprised in English as "Sugar and Honey"; finally, these two reprises are followed by a baffling drum-n-bass remix of "Club Kung-Fu", which bears only the slightest resemblance to the original.
The music for the ensuing album, Traces of Sadness, was written by Brandes with help from one Jane Tempest, with lyrics by the pseudonymous John O'Flynn; for some it represents the band's halcyon days, but it's their least satisfying album, with or without the anachronistic stylistic trappings. Part of the problem is the production, which is unsubtle, insufficently varied, and at times bombastic. Another is the material: "Stay" and "Wherever" both fail to take off, the title track is overlong and a bit turgid, and "Tough Enough" and "Don't Go Too Fast" try to play up to some sort of hard-girl image but don't really convince. So too with "Liar", although the way the title is spat out is a welcome touch of character and something of a surprise.
On the plus side, there are two decent ballads: "When the Indians Cry", despite the overwrought lyric, is purpose-built for stadiums and is very well sung, and "Destroyed by You" finishes the album (not counting rather unnecessary extended versions of two songs) nicely. "Metal Queen" rocks surprisingly hard - it's a favourite of most of the band - and benefits from Lenna's interestingly retrained vocal, although the somewhat trite lyric is sung totally straight and is thus unintentionally hilarious. The most successful of the faster songs are the poppier-styled "Looking for a Hero", "Don't You Realize", and "Heartless"; the last of these, with a memorable chanted hookline, would achieve true greatness with a proper middle-eight and lyrics which aspire to more than "my contract with love will expire" and "protected by guardians of darkness".
Brandes was astute enough to squeeze two further pieces of product out of the album. The first is a "special edition" containing "classical" (i.e. performed with an orchestra) and "acoustic" versions (with some pretty nifty acoustic guitar playing) of most of the songs; it's interesting but, by keeping the original vocal tracks rather than rerecording them to fit the new arrangements, comes across as more of a production exercise than anything else. It ends with "Light of Hope", which is actually the backing track for "When the Indians Cry" with a lyric rewritten for Christmas, but the singing is sincere enough to make it work.
The second is a "Live in Estonia" DVD of consisting of faithful concert renditions of eleven songs from the album; the missing one, "Destroyed by You", is replaced with - oh yes - a mid-set "Drum Solo" while the girls get changed, but thankfully the fearsome-looking Icelandic Petr is enough of a character, hitting the cymbals with his head, to justify it. The band are augmented onstage by a further two guitarists and a second keyboard player, which won't satisfy those keen to know the extent to which the girls actually play their instruments; Piret is clearly playing the riff to "Don't You Realise", for example, but it's not obvious what Maarja is supposed to be doing in the middle of "Metal Queen". Such reservations aside, they line up decorously at the front of the stage and are clearly enjoying themselves; "Heartless" makes the most of its hookline and comes across particularly well, despite Maarja singing the first verse twice by mistake, and "Metal Queen" brings the main set to a thunderous close. But whose idea was it to start the encores with "Pie Jesu"?
Despite its silly title and lyrical oddness (apparently it's about a tiger), "Cool Vibes" doesn't outstay its welcome - unlike "Blue Tattoo", the title track and first song on the third album, which previously appeared in acoustic form at the start of the special edition of Traces of Sadness. Lenna gives her all - her voice by now having matured into a considerable asset by any standards - but the song takes itself far too seriously, and neither she nor the massed backing vocals can defeat the portentous tone and overwrought lyrics which weigh down four trying minutes. "Hellracer", despite some earcatching use of stereo, is one chorus too long and sounds forced, and someone really should have told Lenna how to pronounce "tear" correctly.
Nonetheless, Blue Tattoo is a better album than Traces of Sadness; the production is subtler, giving the songs more room to breathe, and the musical tone is more varied, often with a darker and slightly Gothic flavour. Both are particularly noticeable on "Just Another Day to Live", the band's second-longest song (after "Spit It Out" on the debut), and their most compelling and convincing to date; like much of the album, it sounds particularly good with proper headphones. Triinu and Piret have a verse each alongside Lenna, and both also sing lead on a further song and a half elsewhere; Piret's gentler voice does the verses on the otherwise undistinguished single "I Know", but is better suited to "I Don't Care At All", a pleasant and lighter-toned song which is spoiled only by an uninspired key-change and fade on the last chorus. Interestingly, it's one of two songs she co-wrote with Lenna; the other, "Undercover Girl", is all right but not terribly memorable.
Meanwhile, Triinu's even softer voice and unusual accent give "Corner of my Mind" a distinctive and quite piquant touch, and she takes the first verse on the album's most interesting song, "My Puzzle of Dreams", to whose lyric Lenna and Piret contributed. Lenna's full-bodied roar takes over for the rest, and it reaches such a fine pitch in the choruses and particularly towards the end that it's a pity that its momentum is broken by the heavy riffing before the verses; in footballing terms, it's an open goal they contrived to miss. Like Traces of Sadness, there's also a "special edition" (but no live DVD) of Blue Tattoo, about which the same comments apply except that it contains reworked versions of all twelve songs; a complete collection thus contains three versions of "Blue Tattoo", which is arguably two too many.
The release of the album was followed by considerable upheavals, of which the departure of Triinu was far from the worst; it's been put down variously to her desire to finish school, her age (she is younger than Lenna by three years, and the other two by five), and the reliable excuses of "personal differences" and "musical differences". Far more serious was the discovery by German TV that Brandes had resorted to the old dodge of buying up lots of copies of recordings by artists who recorded for his record label, Bros Music, to boost their chart placings. How much this contributed to the top-ten placing of "When the Indians Cry" may never be known, but it earned Vanilla Ninja a three-month ban from the German singles charts and Brandes an awful lot of bad karma; the discovery that some of his songs for Vanilla Ninja had previously been recorded by other artists can't have helped his standing with the fans either.
[One such song, by the way, is "My Puzzle of Dreams", previously recorded by the Japanese female quartet Shanadoo as "Wake Me", and by the much dodgier E-Rotic as "Save Me". While the musical basis and vocal melody of all three are the same, Vanilla Ninja's dramatic version is by far the best, although Shanadoo's much poppier and more laid-back one is not without merit of its own. Brandes recycled his material in other ways, too; compare the rising-and-falling chorus melody of "Corner of my Mind" with those of "Traces of Sadness" and "Don't Go Too Fast", and it has been convincingly shown that he lifted the vocal arrangement in the chorus of "Tough Enough" from Falco's "Rock Me Amadeus".]
Some or all of this was undoubtedly responsible for the band leaving Bros Music for EMI. Brandes's response, combing petulance and childishnes, was to declare them "finished" and add injury to insult by releasing a "Megamix" single consisting of bits of their other singles edited together and a Best Of album which combined six songs from Blue Tattoo with seven from Traces of Sadness, pointedly including both of the songs with Triinu's lead vocals and ignoring anything he didn't contribute to the writing of. Piret responded by asking the fans not to have anything to do with this, and to their credit, they complied.
As well as their worst song, Love is War contains two songs with strong claims to being their best: the uptempo "Dangerzone" is quasi-metallic power-pop in the same vein of "Metal Queen" and "Heartless", but arguably surpasses both; while the ballad "The Band that Never Existed" is different in style from anything else they've recorded (except perhaps "I Don't Care At All") and has a lyric which rather snidely dismisses bedroom wannabe musicians like this writer. "Shadows on the Moon", which is sung by Piret, and the very darkly-themed "Black Symphony" recall the best of Blue Tattoo, and the lyric to "Kingdom Burning Down" is surely another barb directed in the general direction of Brandes.
"Pray" and "Silence" at each end of the second side (and how did I get hold of this on vinyl, you ask? not telling) are both creditable ballads, although the album sags a bit in between with the not terribly successful "Battlefield" and not terribly exciting "Spirit of the Dawn". It's lifted back up by "Insane In Vain" and "Bad Girls"; the second of these benefits from a natty arrangement decorated with handclaps, and subverts its superficially trite lyric ("smile in your face while stealing your jewels") with a subtle but distinct undercurrent of desperation.