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This one will leave you scratching your head and tapping your foot at the same time. Mika’s “Life in Cartoon Motion” is by far this year’s weirdest album. Not so weird that you’ll wonder why you’re listening to it, but so weird that you’re left wondering why other people aren’t. Mika is in the same vein of pop/rock as some of the older acts from the seventies- Queen and Elton John. It’s pop/ opera type music that fuses some of today’s hook-filled pop music with classical/refined music blended in. This style works well for Mika, but when he goes too far away from it the songs are a little obnoxious. And the problem with that is the album is half obnoxious and half brilliant. Songs like “Grace Kelly” (the single) are the brilliant songs on this album. He doesn’t get too flamboyant on those tracks but when he just jumps off the deep end and gets too much into the euro/techno stuff that’s when things get a little weird. Namely, “Relax (Take it Easy)” is one of the odd songs on the album, and it pounds in your head like you’re getting mashed between the dudes from “Night at the Roxbury”, and that’s not a good thing. While restraining in certain places would have made this album a must listen, it would have taken away from the artistic quality of the album. Maybe that’s a good thing or maybe that’s a bad thing, but this is probably going to be too weird for most people.