//Neon Reviews: Lily Allen – It’s Not Me, It’s You//

It sounds like a friendly little ditty. The sonic atmosphere echoes like a hop-scotching children’s tune, but the lyrics are brazenly adult. “So you say it’s not OK to be gay/Well I think you’re just evil…F*ck you. F*ck you very, very much,” sings British songbird Lily Allen in the sweetest tone with only a hint of vindictiveness on the track titled, quite simply, “F*ck You” taken from her new album, It’s Not Me, It’s You.

Lily’s mix of fluffy pop backgrounds with razor sharp honest lyrics is nothing new. The singer came out of the box with the sweet and sour “Smile” from her critically acclaimed 2007 US debut album Alright, Still.

She continues building her signature style on the new album, due Feb. 10 on Capitol Records, but adds to her sound by including a wide array of genres from pop, jazz, country, and even, polka with mostly pleasing results thanks to the help of The Bird and The Bee producer Greg Kurstin.

The first single, “The Fear,” is pure effervescent pop fair where she coos about the blinding affect fame and money has on her view of the real world; “Not Fair” finds Lily in country/western mode as she lashes a lover for being a flop in the bedroom (“When we go up to bed you’re just no good/It’s such a shame”); and she attacks ageism on the boppity “22.”

But not every track is as brash. Allen shows her sensitive side on the piano-driven, synth-enhanced ”I Could Say,” a song about the freedom she feels after releasing herself from a smothering relationship. “Who’d Have Known” proves inside that cheeky package lies a girl who still finds joy in seeing her new love’s phone number flash across her phone. The jazzy “He Wasn’t There” chronicles Lily’s rocky to paved relationship with her father (“I’m so pleased I never gave up on him”).

With far more hits to outweigh the misses–the George Bush-slamming “Him” makes for a great crowd participation track at a live show, but is a dated downer to listen to on CD–it might just be OK that Allen named her album something as conceited as It’s Not Me, It’s You–it’s not her and she backs it up with this album.