Beth Orton: SuperPinkyMandy

BETH ORTON: SUPERPINKYMANDY (1993)

1) Don't Wanna Know 'Bout Evil; 2) Yesterday's Gone; 3) When You Wake; 4) City Blue; 5) Where Do You Go?; 6) Faith Will Carry; 7) She Cries Your Name; 8) Roll The Dice; 9) The Prisoner; 10) Release Me.

Although Beth Orton herself has always stated that her first «proper» album was Trailerpark, and almost went as far as to disown the first stage of her recording career altogether, there is no getting away from the facts that SuperPinkyMandy was (a) a complete LP, (b) a complete LP officially released on a Japanese record label, (c) a complete LP officially released on a record label and credited to Beth Orton, along with the authorship of most of the songs. Additionally, there is no getting away from my opinion that SuperPinkyMandy, despite being completely different from the «stereotypical» Beth Orton LP, is at least as good as the very best of those LPs, and, in some ways, maybe even better. Not a «masterpiece», perhaps, but certainly an album that deserves much larger exposure than recommended by its very author.

Elizabeth Caroline Orton, a former Pizza Hut waitress, caterer, and amateur actor, got her first musical break when she teamed up with William Orbit, at that time still a relatively unknown man-of-the-arts who would eventually get his biggest break producing Madonna's Ray Of Light — but, frankly, his collaboration with Orton, free from the obligation to follow «strictly com­mer­cial» rules, was a far superior effort, despite largely following the same line of work: putting re­latively straightforward and traditional pop melodies in a supah-cool, trendy, futuristic electronic casing. Amazingly, the combination works to near-perfection.

SuperPinkyMandy does not try to mask its strict adherence to «formula». With a few minor ex­ceptions, each track here gradually or quickly sets up a danceable «trip-hoppy» groove, some­times faster, sometimes slower, against which the singer positions her vocals, usually echoey and ghostly, and almost always resolving into a repetitive, mantraic chorus. Around this chorus, even more ghostly backing vocals and various electronic or non-electronic effects cluster in unpredic­table combinations, working towards a dizzifying neo-psychedelic feel. In this context, the role of the singer is reduced (lead vocal being only one equal part of everything else), and that is good — Beth Orton is credible, but she's nowhere near as uniquely interesting, personality-wise, as Beth Gibbons, for instance (just to name another Beth from the same era), and when she allows herself to be just a part of the scenery, «less» becomes «more».

Orton and Orbit first tested the water with a cover version — taking John Martyn's acoustic sen­timentality ʽDon't Wanna Know 'Bout Evilʼ ("only wanna know 'bout love") and giving it the «Orbit touch». The result, with about four or five different keyboard parts, analog and digital alike, piled on top of the rhythmic groove, and Beth adding her «icy numb» vocals — suggesting that here is a woman that already has learned everything possible about evil, but nothing so far about love — is either inoffensively boring, or mildly mesmerizing, depending on the nature of your own senses, but at least the combination of ingredients is unique enough to allow for some intrigue, and then build it up from there.

Encouraged by the results, they then applied this formula to a bunch of self-written tracks, with Orbit taking care of the grooves and Beth supplying the mantras. Stylistically, the grooves con­tain enough diversity to last you all the way through. ʽYesterday's Goneʼ is hard, harsh, funky, and moves in the direction of hardcore techno, while Beth is singing the vocal part of Atropos the Moira, sternly warning us about "blind chances of destiny". ʽWhen You Wakeʼ buzzes and drones on with two guitars weaving around each other, like a Velvet Underground imitation. ʽFaith Will Carryʼ sounds the closest to a proto-Ray Of Light techno-pop number, but with a nice ringing guitar part helping it come across as more natural. ʽShe Cries Your Nameʼ, which would later be re-recorded for Trailerpark (in a much less impressive fashion, if you ask me), is almost bluesy, but still spiced up with suitably astral noises to add coldness and distance. And so on, with just about every song having something to offer.

If there is anything to criticize, it might be the rhythmic base of the grooves, which is nowhere near as experimental or just plain inventive as the layers of overdubs, or even the basslines, laid down with love and care. Most of the beat patterns are averagely funky, or mildly techno, but in the end, the similarity of the signatures of tempos may trick you into feeling that all these songs are the same, when they really aren't. Perhaps, in the end, it was the percussion that annoyed Beth so much that she'd swore she'd never want to work like this again — too bad, because, having split up with Orbit, she not only lost the beats, but also the man's talent at setting up the proper musical atmosphere for her icy melancholy. And maybe even more than that, because her ballads on the «regular» albums often sound boring, whereas a thing like ʽWhere Do You Go?ʼ, losing the beat and adding pianos and strings, is totally charming: the chorus ("where do you go when the wind doesn't blow?") contains one of her finest folksy vocal flourishes that I have not en­countered that frequently in her subsequent career.

Naturally, you won't like SuperPinkyMandy if you do not have a thing for «mood music», nor does it even begin to compare with the pinnacles of that genre, where «mood» borders on destruc­tive implosion (like Dummy). But if you do have a thing for «getting in the mood», and do not mind lowering your expectations a bit, you will be more than rewarded by the surprisingly unex­pected creativity of the album. And its uniqueness, provided your casual acquaintance with Beth Orton began with Trailerpark. Fortunately, these days it is much easier to get access to a long out-of-print album than it used to in the good old «print days», so you will probably have little trouble locating the tunes, so you can join me in my sincere thumbs up.

Black Sabbath: Black Sabbath

BLACK SABBATH: BLACK SABBATH (1970)

1) Black Sabbath; 2) The Wizard; 3) Behind The Wall Of Sleep; 4) N.I.B.; 5) Evil Woman; 6) Sleeping Village; 7) Warning; 8) Wicked World.

Thirty-seven seconds. Or, otherwise, «as soon as the second thunderstrike begins to subside». That's what I have to tell myself every time that the tritone-infested riff to ʽBlack Sabbathʼ kicks in, in order to avoid a quick heart jump, and even that does not always help. Kudos to Rodger Bain, who had the idea to add a rain-and-thunder setting to open the song — just imagine how differently it would all be if it just began with Tony Iommi's master-riff. You have to be prepared for that riff, build up some necessary suspense. Black Sabbath took their early cues from B-level horror movies, after all, and those movie guys knew their suspense strategies all right.

Simple, brutal, healthy cheap thrills — this is what these four working-class lads from Birmin­gham were about. None of that «deep» pretentious bullshit. Geezer Butler, their bass player, did tend to add a little mysticism and self-importance to their lyrics (I think Iommi used to refer to him as «the smart one» in the band, which is funny, since most of their social and educational background was more or less the same), but Ozzy Osbourne, the singer, never took the lyrics too seriously (if he did, he'd explode), and the band's basic ambition was simple enough — to kick ass in front of you, to en­tertain you, and, just for fun, to scare some shit out of you in the process.

That said, Black Sabbath the album as a whole can hardly be appreciated as Black Sabbath the band's finest hour. The image of the band — dark, scary purveyors of the nascent heavy metal genre — was fully formed, and from that point of view this is technically their most influential record; but the truth is that on October 16, 1969, when they went into Regent Sound Studios to cut it, they simply did not have enough songs. They played their regular live set, but, unlike, say, The Doors, they slouched around for too long to populate it with enough hook-filled composi­tions. (Speaking of The Doors, the main riff to ʽWicked Worldʼ sounds way too suspiciously si­milar to The Doors' own ʽWild Childʼ, which had come out on The Soft Parade three months prior to the Black Sabbath session — coincidence? or a trick of the subconscious?).

What this translates to is a clear gap in quality between Side A of the album, which proudly stands its ground against any future Sabbath release, and Side B, which, frankly speaking, seems unabashedly dedicated to filler — curious and occasionally fun filler, but definitely not prime Sabbath stuff, and Tony would probably be the first to acknowledge that, particularly seeing how they never played anything from that side live once their backlog started filling up. As a four or five song EP, Black Sabbath would be the shit to end all other shit; as it is, it's padded about as crudely as you'd expect four rather crude Birmingham lads to pad it.

Nevertheless, that first side is quite enough to crown Tony Iommi as the undisputed supreme ruler of the heavy metal riff from the very beginning. The title track and ʽN.I.B.ʼ went on to be­come classics of the genre, and the slightly less known ʽWizardʼ and ʽBehind The Wall Of Sleepʼ are also prime cuts that deserve similar recognition. Technically, these riffs are among the sim­plest Tony ever came up with — and they reflect his genius far better than any of the complex, but so often unsatisfying melodies he'd write for Sabbath in the post-Ozzy era. Just how simple, exactly, are those three chords that constitute the main theme to ʽBlack Sabbathʼ? Jimmy Page would have cringed at having to play something like that. It's a grotesque, phantasmagoric, «cor­ny» (if you wish) sound, for sure, but goddammit, it works on the most elementary emotional level. You want Satan? Use the tritone. It's as simple as that. Funniest of all, Tony did not have the faintest idea of what he was using — he just felt that this combination would give the scary effect that was required, and he used it. I guess Satan was coming round the bend, after all.

You probably couldn't find anybody at the time with ideas more «basic» than Iommi's, and, in a sense, all that press disdain that followed Black Sabbath through their first years was quite justi­fied from a sheerly intellectual point of view. Look at the riff to ʽN.I.B.ʼ and you will see that its first four notes almost coincide with the beginning of ʽSunshine Of Your Loveʼ; but where the latter continues with a completely different, almost jazzy, six-note pattern, Tony makes his six notes into an extended shadow of the first four — something that Bruce and Clapton would have probably condemned as too primitive a trick. But who cares, as long as it works? And if you play it low enough, and add a steady 4/4 beat, and have Geezer play his bass in unison through a wah-wah pedal, it makes your song unquestionably Satanic, and what exactly was ʽSunshine Of Your Loveʼ unquestionably? You couldn't give a straight answer, could you? Well, Black Sabbath are a band that has no qualms about coming up with straight answers.

Their singer is so straight, in fact, that when you listen to the early albums, it's as if they were locking him up in an «iron maiden» in the studio every time, then thrusting the mike under his lips. Ozzy could hit the notes, but he had no range as such, could usually only sing in unison with the supporting riff, and always had the same emotional expression to his voice that basically translated to: «don't you fuck with me, or I have no idea what I'll do if you do». It's sort of an odd mix of «mischievous», «stoned», and «panicky», and on paper, it doesn't at all sound like it would be a good combination with Tony's riffs. Honestly, I still have no idea why it is. Maybe it's just the fact that Tony and Ozzy are both one-trick ponies each of which does their one and only trick to utmost perfection, and when they do it at once, it's like a Lennon-McCartney effect for when you only have the opportunity to spare one track of your mind.

Anyway, on ʽBlack Sabbathʼ Ozzy is a lone madman tempted by the «figure in black»; on ʽThe Wizardʼ, he seems temporarily relieved because "demons worry when the wizard is near"; on ʽBe­hind The Wall Of Sleepʼ, he awakens from nightmares into sunny reality; but then on ʽN.I.B.ʼ it is suddenly "my name is Lucifer, please take my hand", so we have to assume multiple perso­nality disorder. Never mind, it's all in a day's work (literally) for Ozzy. Whatever Geezer would write for him, be it gloomy or cheerful, you could always count on Mr. Osbourne to give it his one and only all, and it would still sound charming when set to a prime Iommi riff. Geezer could just as well give him a list of ingredients from a soda bottle.

At their best, though, Sabbath already had more to offer than just heavy metal riffs and a poker face singer. Tony could play a mean lead guitar when he put his heart into it — the solos on ʽN.I.B.ʼ and the title track are still relatively simple, but scorching. And Ozzy has quite an expres­sive harmonica part on ʽThe Wizardʼ, even though, once Tony's main riff finally comes through, you'll probably forget all about the mouth harp. They are also smart enough to let the rhythm sec­tion show their strong sides: Geezer's little introductory solo to ʽN.I.B.ʼ is not very demanding, technically, but with the addition of the wah-wah effect, it is the first «evil-sounding» (rather than simply «dark») bass solo that I know of, almost literally grinning at you with its frets.

But then there are all those problems on the second side, when the band spends too much time jamming on the interminable ʽSleeping Village/Warningʼ rant. Critics say that one of Sabbath's chief achievements was «chasing the blues out of metal» — well, these jams are still fairly bluesy, aren't they? Clearly, somebody spent too much time listening to Cream, and echoes of late Sixties blues-rock were still ringing very loud in Tony's ears when they were recording this stuff. And, of course, Tony is no Clapton, not with these metal fingertips plucking the strings, to seriously com­pete on that market — not that the band ever wanted to in the first place. I actually like the main sung parts of ʽWarningʼ; it is the only track on the album where Ozzy manages to add a little chilly menace to his singing ("I was born without you, baby / But my feelings were a little bit too strong" is delivered with a perfect cool). But all those Claptonisms in the middle, no. Pulling in the wrong direction.

Still, what with all the early heavy metal perfection going on in the first half, the only way Black Sabbath could have avoided an enthusiastic thumbs up would be if they fired Ozzy before the sessions and replaced him with David Coverdale. And don't get me wrong — these, as well as all the other «thumbs up» that will follow are not in respect of the album's «influence». (In fact, in a way, I'd rather that influence never existed.) It is because, as «technically primitive» as these songs are by modern day standards of the metal genre, their primal power still blows away 99% of everything ever since recorded in that genre. And all those savvy, heavily trained modern metal com­posers, playing at 120mph and choking their albums with ultra-complex riffage that all ends up sounding the same, could only wish they were Tony Iommi circa 1970.

PS: A technical note — Black Sabbath comes in several varieties, with some editions containing ʽEvil Womanʼ (a rather lightweight garage-metal rocker, released as the band's first single), some containing ʽWicked Worldʼ (its B-side) instead, and some CD versions incorporating both. Also, track listings may differ depending on how many parts of multi-part compositions are given their own titles (for instance, Geezer's solo before ʽN.I.B.ʼ is sometimes called ʽBassicallyʼ and some­times not called anything). Some of the confusion is due to the differences in original US and UK releases, and some seems to have appeared in the CD era — but I guess it's only fitting for a re­cord that was originally issued on Friday the 13th.

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Bob Dylan: The Bootleg Series Vol. 4 (The "Royal Albert Hall" Concert)

BOB DYLAN: THE BOOTLEG SERIES VOL. 4: THE «ROYAL ALBERT HALL» CONCERT (1966; 1998)

1) She Belongs To Me; 2) Fourth Time Around; 3) Visions Of Johanna; 4) It's All Over Now, Baby Blue; 5) De­so­lation Row; 6) Just Like A Woman; 7) Mr. Tambourine Man; 8) Tell Me, Momma; 9) I Don't Believe You (She Acts Like We Never Have Met); 10) Baby, Let Me Follow You Down; 11) Just Like Tom Thumb's Blues; 12) Leopard-Skin Pill-Box Hat; 13) One Too Many Mornings; 14) Ballad Of A Thin Man; 15) Like A Rolling Stone.

It was only a matter of time before The Bootleg Series would turn into a chain of new releases — considering that Bob Dylan was one of the most heavily bootlegged artists of all time, and quite justly so. Perhaps the wait was intentional: in 1997, Time Out Of Mind proved to everyone that the old man still had plenty of incense left to burn, and it became safe to put out archival docu­ments without expecting the average review to carry on in a «yes, believe it or not, there was a time when there was a reason to listen to Bob Dylan...» manner. Or perhaps it wasn't. Whatever be the case, over a stretch of seven years The Bootleg Series managed to enrich us with three fantastic live albums in a row — each one featuring a Bob Dylan that was completely different from the other two, albeit not exactly in chronological order.

The first choice was perfectly natural, almost predictable: the «Royal Albert Hall» Concert boot­leg (quotation marks signify that the album was originally misattributed to a more famous loca­tion, even though the actual show was played at the Manchester Free Trade Hall) had been in heavy circulation since the early 1970s, and was traditionally held in awe by fans due to its con­taining the infamous «Judas!» episode. Fortunately, the official release went all the way to boot the boot out of competition — not only by including the complete show, together with the first acoustic half (the boot only contained the electric set), but also by cleaning up and remastering the original tapes, so that the final product is pretty much impeccable. (There are a couple spots on the acoustic part where Bob's voice suddenty turns distant and cavernous midway through the song, but that may have been due to some microphone problems or slight equipment malfunction, and it does not do much harm anyway).

Technically speaking, and also from the point of view of the continuously evolving setlist, there may have been better shows that were played by Bob on his British tour of mid-'66. But, of course, it is not really for performing quality that The «Royal Albert Hall» Concert has gained most of its fame — it is more for serving as a priceless historical document illustrating the end­less conflict between «The Artist» and «The People». Should The Artist, offering his Art to The People, pander to The People instead of following his individual muse? Should The People ex­pect to be given what they want from The Artist (especially if they're paying for it), or should The People respect the integrity and/or evolution of The Artist? Does The Artist have a right to force his actions on The People? Do The People have a right to force The Artist to amend his ways, even if they believe they are acting in Art's best interests? So many questions in that field, and they are all raised on Live 1966, even if not one of them is conclusively answered.

You probably know the backstory already, and what you don't know can easily be deduced from listening to the album itself. First part of the show — «traditional»: Dylan and his acoustic guitar alone on stage, lights dimmed, dreamy, mumbly voice, the audience holding their breath. Still weird, though, since the man has decided not to sing any of his old «protest» tunes, but is instead treating everyone to stripped-down acoustic versions of songs from his new, bizarre, modernist, «treasonable» electric albums. Only ʽMr. Tambourine Manʼ dates back to 1964, and even that one refers to an imaginary, hallucinatory universe, rather than a world populated by Hollis Browns and Hattie Carrolls. The audience applauds politely, but nobody really knows what they feel —mesmerized? enchanted? confused? disappointed?

Second part of the show — «treason» starts in earnest: the Hawks appear onstage, set up their instruments, and Dylan leads them in an ear-piercingly loud electric set that includes not only re­cent songs, but also — treason! treason! — those old acoustic songs from the folk troubadour era, now reinvented as bombastic rockers. "This is called ʽI Don't Believe Youʼ. It used to be like that, and now it goes like this". 'Nuff said. The battle line is drawn.

Of course, like 99% of the stuff that eventually passes into legend, Dylan's clash with the «tradi­tionalists» was always overstated. The acoustic set goes on without a hitch, and the first two songs of the electric set also feature no ruckus. «Trouble» kicks in after ʽI Don't Believe Youʼ, when hecklers first start peppering the stage with insults, and then join together in a clap-hands demonstration whose purpose is rather to show disrespect than to boo the man offstage complete­ly. But listen closely to the album and it becomes clear that there is only one part of the audience, a representative, clearly audible group, maybe about a quarter or so of the hall, that is getting busy with heckling — and that Dylan actually gets more approving applause at the end of each «electric» performance than he gets «disruptive» applause from the hecklers. So picturing this as some sort of epochal «One Man Against The Whole Wide World» battle would be overdoing it: clearly, were it really like that, Bob would never have set foot on British soil, or removed it once and for all after the very first show.

Nevertheless, he does have to battle the hecklers, and the way he eventually wins over the majo­rity of them, to me, is far more priceless than the famous «Judas!» — «I don't believe you... you're a liar!» exchange. At one point, as the counter-applause really threatens to spread to an alarming level, the man begins mumbling some slurred, incomprehensible story into the micro­phone: eventually, the hecklers calm down, as curiosity to hear what is actually being told gets the better of them, and just as the rhythm of the clapping hands breaks down and dissipates, Bob finishes the «story» with a «...mumble mumble grumble grumble... if you only just wouldn't clap so hard». At that point, even some of the hecklers probably couldn't help breaking into a general laugh, and the atmosphere becomes significantly lighter from then on. Just one of those little things, I guess, but sometimes they illustrate the greatness of great minds with much more clarity than «big things», don't they?

That said, Live 1966 does tend to get its fair share of «tepid» assessments these days, usually accompanied with the formula: «historically great, no doubt, but rather so-so as an actual musical performance». Well, it is probably true that the atmosphere was a bit too tense for both Dylan and the Hawks to concentrate exclusively on the music. The electric part, in particular, sets out to overwhelm rather than intrigue the listener — the emphasis is on being loud, on getting every decibel possible out of every instrument, with the six players on stage doing everything they can to sound like a big band, if not like a symphonic orchestra, but only with reference to volume, bombast, and power, not to «tightness», which may be found missing. And on the acoustic part, Bob largely neglects the guitar, concentrating most of his expressiveness in the art of singing and playing harmonica (ʽDesolation Rowʼ suffers the most, as it may be hard to endure all of its 11 minutes without the ornate baroque guitar flourishes of the original).

But then this is, after all, a performance in the «garage» spirit of the times: substance, energy, and revolutionary ideals first, technical quality second. So the band teeters on the brink of chaos every now and then, but they never descend into chaos (and, actually, it would be fun even if they did), and the maniacal strength of the proceedings is still with us — as ʽTell Me, Mommaʼ (a song that was frequently performed, but never made it onto any of the studio albums) opens the electric set, the band plays the first bars quietly and tentatively, looking for the groove, then drummer Mickey Jones gives the signal, and off they go into complete electric madness. Robbie Robertson, in par­ticular, gets into the spirit brilliantly, and his sharp, gruff guitar leads, usually attested in brief splatches as they emerge from under the general rumble, are a worthy counterpart to Dylan's moaning, howling, and wailing (three preferred modes during the electric set).

I must say that, throughout both sets, Dylan does sound «trippy». Whether he was really on grass or acid, was just tired, or was just acting, is unclear, but if this manner of singing is typical of his 1966 tour (and, judging, by the real Royal Albert Hall performance of ʽVisions Of Johannaʼ on Biograph, it might have), it is seriously different from both the snappy, sneery performance style of Highway 61 and the more contemplative, peaceful manner on Blonde On Blonde. This here style is more «breathy», more «nasal», and, in moments of frenzy, more high-pitched than he usually goes. Later on, when the 1970s came along, he would resort more to shouting out the words, but here, he drags and drawls them out as if in an intoxicated haze. No mistakes, no slip-ups, but a sound that seems completely locked in on itself rather than targeted at the audience — an additional factor, perhaps, in enraging the hecklers, who must have gotten the feeling that the man is doing it all strictly for himself, and couldn't care less about whoever else was out there in the hall (a correct feeling, most likely). Unfortunately, in my case at least, it does not exactly make me want to listen to the album over and over again — even the great, fabulous conclusion of ʽLike A Rolling Stoneʼ ("play fucking loud!") has the feeling of an imposing distant volcano, erupting over the heads of the unfortunate nearby villagers rather than over your own: I get the feeling of admiring the scene from afar rather than being directly involved. But that's also the same thing that makes it such a fascinating historical document.

On the other hand, it must also be stated that the stripped-down acoustic versions, especially ʽVisions Of Johannaʼ, raise the «intimacy» bar rather than lowering it — the mystical nighttime aura of ʽVisionsʼ is enhanced through this minimalism, even if I do miss Al Kooper's ghostly or­gan (but not Robertson's squeaky guitar runs, for that matter). And in general, I'd say that acous­tic reinventions of Bob's «beatnik-psychedelic» classics are more interesting, per se, than the electric reworkings of Bob's acoustic material, because most of the electric songs, mood-wise, sound the same in this setting, whereas the acoustic songs still preserve their individual faces. Plus, you get to hear Bob's harmonica better, and he behaves like a mean, evil beast with the instrument, parti­cularly on the opening ʽShe Belongs To Meʼ and on the closing ʽMr. Tambourine Manʼ — some of the shrillest, wickedest blasts you'll ever hear.

All in all, this is probably not the «greatest live album of all time» from anything but a purely historical point of view, and this may not even necessarily be the greatest live Bob Dylan album of all time (at least the next two volumes in the series give it quite a bit of competition), but, re­gardless of that, you have much left to accomplish in your life if you have not yet heard a good sample of Bob Dylan live circa 1966, and no better sample exists than this. As for historical im­portance, my only quibble is that people who praise Live 1966 to high heaven for that importance should stop dissing Live At Budokan — which, for my money, quite matched Live 1966 in the overall «braveness» of approach, even though the Fan War of 1965-66 was ultimately won and the Critical War of 1978-79 was ultimately lost. Of course, nobody could call Dylan's reinvention of his back catalog in «mock-Vegas format» a «key moment in rock history». Yet I think that, to most people, Live 1966 is important not for holding a particular vital place in history — but for simply showing how one man can hold his obstinate ground against many and emerge victorious, sort of like a rock music equivalent of 12 Angry Men, and so, let us not forget that this was far from the only such battle in Dylan's lifestory, even if it's naturally the first one to be featured on the thumbs up list for such achievements.

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Bill Withers: Just As I Am

BILL WITHERS: JUST AS I AM (1971)

1) Harlem; 2) Ain't No Sunshine; 3) Grandma's Hands; 4) Sweet Wanomi; 5) Everybody's Talkin'; 6) Do It Good; 7) Hope She'll Be Happier; 8) Let It Be; 9) I'm Her Daddy; 10) In My Heart; 11) Moanin' And Groanin'; 12) Better Off Dead.

There has certainly been many a strange album recorded in 1970-71, as idealistic psychedelia be­gan losing ground to musical psychotherapy, but the official debut of Bill Withers definitely de­serves a special place of its own. He was certainly not the first performer to combine aspects of the post-Dylan «singer-songwriter» approach with the foundations of soul and R&B, but he may have been the first black artist to try it out on such a consistent basis — generating a sound and a feel that you cannot get from any other artist, black or white, circa 1971. The title of the album it­self seems almost ironic in that light: Just As I Am? It actually takes quite a while to figure out just as what exactly the man is, and even then, it's hard to be sure.

Unlike typical R&B performers, Bill Withers materialized out of nowhere — rather than being spotted in some local church or club and put through a period of grooming, he just sent in some demo tapes to L.A.-based Sussex Records; the label owner Clarence Avant liked what he heard, signed Withers to a contract, and assigned no less than Booker T. Jones himself to produce the man's first album. (Yes, boys and girls, it used to be that easy, provided you had real talent to burn and a proper place to turn it up). More than that — on his debut album, Withers is accom­panied by Jim Keltner on drums, Chris Ethridge (of the Flying Burrito Brothers) on bass, and Stephen Stills on electric guitar. Any other debutant could have pissed his pants from utter hap­piness right there in the studio — but one single listen to Just As I Am will suffice to understand that Bill Withers is as far from a potential pants-pisser as can be.

Most encyclopaedias and online review sites tag Just As I Am as a «soul» or «R&B» album, just because it had some members of Booker T. & The MGs playing on it, and was sung by a black performer, and we all know black people used to sing «soul» or «R&B» before they all turned to rap and other crap. In reality, this is ridiculous: Just As I Am is a dark, seriously disturbing and disturbed singer-songwriter album that mixes some elements of traditional soul and R&B (and blues, and jazz) with the «whitebread» folk-rock scene of the time — in fact, it is more James Taylor than Al Green, I'd say, but way, way bleaker than both. In fact, if we were to believe that the album title tells the truth, we probably wouldn't want to mess around with the guy. The album ends with the sound of a gunshot, for Christ's sake!

Most of the time, however, the album simply resonates with tension, never coming to the brink of a genuine explosion. ʽHarlemʼ initiates us into the world of Bill Withers with a swinging, dan­ceable rhythm, and lines like "Saturday night in Harlem / Ev'rything's alright / You can really swang and shake your pretty thang / The parties are out of sight" would suggest that we are invi­ted to have fun — but the dark bass groove and almost threatening strings, gradually rising up and gaining in shrillness, insist that the party is rigged, and then there's the counterpoint: "It's too hot to sleep / And I'm too broke to eat / I don't care if I die or not". Immediately, it is made clear that we are not to be entertained — that the performer's vision of Harlem and everything that goes with it is certainly not encumbered by rose-colored glasses.

From there on, song after song deals with the little horrors of life — loneliness (ʽAin't No Sun­shineʼ), nostalgia for dead relatives (ʽGrandma's Handsʼ), losing your loved one to another (ʽHope She'll Be Happierʼ), and losing a battle with alcohol (ʽBetter Off Deadʼ — the idea of shooting oneself in a bout of alcoholism would later be explored by Alice Cooper on ʽPass The Gun Aroundʼ to a more dramatic, but less subtle and suggestive effect). Every now and then the atmosphere is a bit alleviated with the joys of a healthy sex life (ʽSweet Wanomiʼ, ʽMoanin' And Groanin'ʼ), but when romance is rather seen as temporary salvation from a life full of misery and self-inflicted stupidity, maybe «healthy» is not quite the right word to use.

Creepiest of the lot is ʽI'm Her Daddyʼ, a gloomy, threatening blues-rock number whose lyrics may look innocent on paper — a father demanding to see his six-year old daughter of whose exis­tence he was only recently informed — but sound nearly psychopathic on record, even though Bill himself resorts to screaming only occasionally, preferring to impersonate the neurotic father as quietly as possible, to convey an even more disturbing image. Not grief, not remorse, and ob­viously not happiness — this is a «give-me-back-my-daughter-you-bitch-or-face-the-consequen­ces» type of rant, stunningly realistic and just a tad shivery.

On the other hand, as long as the protagonist is not high and does not present an immediate threat to society, he is prone to acute fits of murderous loneliness — ʽAin't No Sunshineʼ, which be­came Bill's first major hit and went on to be covered by lots of people, tells it like it means it, in a brief series of four-line verses, each line pinching sharp and painful. One of the verses did not work out at first and was temporarily filled by Bill with a series of "I know, I know, I know..." that he was later convinced to keep — this must be a technical record of sorts (how many "I know"s can one fit within one breath?), but it also works very well emotionally within the song. For that matter, Bill is a fantastic singer — check out the way he drawls out "she's gone" on ʽHope She'll Be Happierʼ without a single wrong fluctuation in the airwave.

Strangely, the only relative «misfires» on this weird, haunting album are two cover versions, neither of which is particularly bad, yet they just do not seem to fit. Well, ʽEverybody's Talkin'ʼ could fit thematically, but in the process of reinventing it, Bill somehow flushes out the sad-and-tired mood of the original; and the gospel-style, clap-your-hands-together rewrite of ʽLet It Beʼ can only be qualified as sheer filler. There ain't no talk about finding inner peace, like the song suggests, on this album — ʽLet It Beʼ and ʽAin't No Sunshineʼ are mutually exclusive, not to mention ʽBetter Off Deadʼ which is sort of an anti-ʽLet It Beʼ if there ever was one. It's almost as if they told him, "hey, we won't release the record unless there's a McCartney number on it", and he went, "oh yeah? I'll show you McCartney!" — and recorded this quasi-parodic deconstruction that replaces solemnity with stupid forced cheerfulness.

Everything else rules, and is as far removed from «formulaic» soul records of the period as pos­sible; if anything, Just As I Am belongs on the same shelf as John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band and Joni Mitchell's Blue and all those other singer-songwriters' confessionals, even if the lyrics are relatively straightforward in comparison — but when it comes to psychological layers, there is comparable depth in here, sadly, not often mentioned in reviews of the album, which prefer dwelling on formal aspects (such as the subtle textures of Stephen Stills' electric guitar, which are important to the album's sound — in fact, I could easily see some of these songs covered by Stills on an auspicious day — but are hardly at the very heart of it). Major thumbs up.

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Agalloch: The Serpent & The Sphere

AGALLOCH: THE SERPENT & THE SPHERE (2014)

1) Birth And Death Of The Pillars Of Creation; 2) (Serpens Caput); 3) The Astral Dialogue; 4) Dark Matter Gods; 5) Celestial Effigy; 6) Cor Serpentis; 7) Vales Beyond Dimension; 8) Plateau Of The Ages; 9) (Serpens Cauda).

After a four-year pause, briefly interrupted only once with the one-track EP Faustian Echoes (on which they tried combining music with an actual Goethe recital and film soundtrack samples, to no major success), Agalloch are finally back to deliver, as you might have guessed, another very much Agalloch album. This time the vague concept behind the songs is even grander than before, switching from issues of decay and extinction of the human race to the birth and death of the Uni­verse itself, apparently imagined in the shape of the Great World Serpent, so if regular cosmology is too boring or difficult for you, feel free to take a sixty-minute crash course on the basic model of the universe from these guys.

The problem is, if you raise the conceptual stakes so high, you should probably be prepared to extract the adequate high cards from your sleeve — and yet, so it seems, this band is still not willing to go far beyond the deuce, if you know what I mean. Four massive LPs into their career, we are now perfectly aware of all the regular trademarks of Agalloch, and The Serpent & The Sphere adds nothing whatsoever to their usual bag of tricks. On the contrary, it subtracts: for in­stance, there are no more traces of clean vocals (have they gotten death threats from serious fans or what?), the instrumentation is very basic (no strings and very few keyboards), and the song tempos, which used to range from «very slow» to «mid-tempo», all tend to drift towards «mid-tempo» now, leaving less room for the subtle, gradual unfurling of the atmospheric canvas.

When you contrast this mysterious self-limitation with a bombastic song title like ʽBirth And Death Of The Pillars Of Creationʼ, this sort of blows out a brain circuit. True, Agalloch never positioned themselves as a major experimental outfit, preferring to test the possibilities of a set formula rather than blow the formula itself to smithereens. Even Marrow Of The Spirit, disap­pointing as it was in general, had itself a bit of testing (the cello intro alone was an unusual move by any accounts). But The Serpent & The Sphere, despite its lyrical ambition, after a few lis­tens remains the first Agalloch album that gives a sharp impression of «regress» rather than «pro­gress», even according to Agalloch's own limited standard.

The bulk of the album is given over to these burly mid-tempo romps that we all know very well by now — two or three guitars woven together in droning / folksy-jangly manners, driven for­ward by a huge drum sound and occasionally accompanied by John Haughm's whispered or growled (more often, whispered and growled) vocals. Describing them is impossible and useless (they tried doing it over at Pitchfork and came out with descriptions like «flickering notes stab­bing at distended riffs and pristine tones countering sheets of distortion», which, if you stare at them long enough, could equally well apply to, say, the Rolling Stones, for example). All I can ask myself is — does any of these riffs and tones exceed the average expectations? And the an­swer is a strict no all the way.

The longest and probably «crucial» number on the album, the twelve-minute instrumental ʽPla­teau Of The Agesʼ, only matches its title, I think, if there was nothing much happening on that particular plateau throughout the ages (which, come to think of it, might very well be the actual fate of most plateaus). A completely predictable, safely played set of crescendos, mainly based on a series of ascending trills the likes of which have been produced a miriad times already — just compare this to something like ʽIn The Shadow Of Our Pale Companionʼ, with its memorable main theme, a series of melodic jumps that were impossible to preview, and a certain sense of exuberance from an ambitious young band that had just picked up the scent of something not completely, but noticeably different. ʽPlateau Of The Agesʼ — and everything else on here — is the same band going through the motions, seemingly bent more on creating a «metaphysical ins­tallation» than music that would continue to be interesting. No steam.

The songs are linked together with three short instrumentals, whose Latin titles refer to the head, heart, and tail of the Serpent — three chrono-spatial parts of the Universe? — but here, too, the curious conceptual idea is realized with three boring acoustic interludes, consisting of the same types of scales and arpeggios that Agalloch themselves and everybody else have already explored many times in the past. Come on now, wouldn't we expect just a little extra thrill from the con­secutive appea­rance of the head, heart, and tail of the Serpent? How about at least using three different instruments, or something?

Probably some songs are slightly more creative than others, but, honestly, I do not have the strength to drag them all under the analytical microscope. Long-term fans of the band have in­deed praised the album, and, since it swears such stark loyalty to the formula, if you really love Agalloch for the atmosphere, you will not be disappointed. If you love Agalloch for the riffs and memorable melodies, you might be a little disappointed (I didn't manage to memorize anything, but maybe it's just me). But if you love Agalloch for pushing boundaries of the genre, stay away. The only thing that will be pushed here is your patience; and mine has been pushed hard enough to get all pissed off and leave here with a mean thumbs down. Will be seeing you 'round about three years on, gentlemen, and please don't forget to bring back the cello at least.

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Beck: Morning Phase

BECK: MORNING PHASE (2014)

1) Cycle; 2) Morning; 3) Heart Is A Drum; 4) Say Goodbye; 5) Blue Moon; 6) Unforgiven; 7) Wave; 8) Don't Let It Go; 9) Blackbird Chain; 10) Phase; 11) Turn Away; 12) Country Down; 13) Waking Light.

A pox upon this whole goddamn «sequel» idea. Time and time again, artists keep falling into this ridiculous temptation — «hey, that masterpiece of mine was so great, I wonder if I can do ano­ther one just like it?» — and it's not even necessarily for the money. No, more likely it is because you happen to run out of ideas, and start looking for inspiration in your own past, sort of an incestu­ous affair with your own body and soul. What good can come out of it? Was there ever a self-con­scious musical «sequel» (excluding multi-volume issues that were initially planned as such) that managed to equal, let alone surpass, the original?

It took Beck more than five years to give us Morning Phase, and when he did, he advertised it as a «companion piece» to Sea Change. But that album needs no companion piece. It is an album about loneliness, for Christ's sake; how can an album about loneliness require a «companion»? And even though Beck's previous records showed some signs of stagnation, not a single one was directly billed as, or emotionally felt like a straightforward attempt to repeat the moods, textures, and effects of any of its predecessors. So is this a confession that Beck is finally spent, and that from now on he will be specializing in inferior re-writes of his past glories?

And here are the general reasons why you could suspect inferiority even before putting on the album. First, remember that Sea Change was actually written and recorded under the shadow of internal struggle and strife — an authentic «breakup album» where the songs were fueled by real feelings. That dark fire may have been artificially fed up, but its basis was real, and you could feel it. Fast forward twelve years, though, and the only internal struggle and strife that we see is from an artist who used to be on the edge of musical progress, and now feels himself somewhat left out, without a proper understanding of how he could be in the lead once again — mixed-up and confused. That could be an emotional basis for something, but why confuse it with the «dis­illusioned recluse» image of Sea Change, then?

Second, for some reason, Beck decided that the album would be self-produced — even though, last time I checked, Nigel Godrich was still alive and well, and even more, this was his regular turn in the «every second album» cycle. Beck did get some of the Sea Change musicians to play on the record, and, once again, entrusted the orchestration business to his father, but Godrich was absolutely crucial to the sound of Sea Change, dressing those songs up in ways that Beck's mind could never have come up with — and yes, he is very sorely missed on Morning Phase, which feels stripped and underworked without the Godrich touch.

Now here is the first revelation when you actually put the album on: it shares a lot of things in common with Sea Change, but in general, it feels nothing like Sea Change. The first and pro­bably best song, ʽMorningʼ, does not strike you with a bleak, secluded view of the world that ʽGolden Ageʼ proclaimed so solemnly. Its lyrical message is completely different: "Can we start it all over again? / This morning / I've lost all my defences / This morning / Won't you show me the way it used to be? / I've gone all around / 'Til there's nothing left to say / We've worn it all down / Into something that couldn't be said". Yes, you could try and interpret it as part of a dialog with a relationship partner, but in this whole context, wouldn't you say that it's basically a song about, er, uhm... impotence? Spiritual, I mean, of course.

A thin whiff of melancholy emanates from the song, but no desperation — Beck is being tender (falsetto in the verses) and submissive (chorus), not particularly happy, but generally coming to terms with his lot, «letting down his defences» indeed. There might even be some sort of early pre-nir­vana calm contained in the tune, what with its angelic harmonies and soothing piano chords bringing on a bit of a «New Age flavor», musically. This will be a serious blow for people who expect strong emotions or body-bending impulses from the man all the time, but if you are prepared to give the man a chance, ʽMorningʼ, as an anthem of calming down, humility and sub­mission, actually has a real point to make.

The bad news is that most of the following songs struggle to make a real point — or, more pre­cisely, they do not struggle to make a real point. ʽHeart Is A Drumʼ picks up the tempo a little bit to become a simple, unassuming folk-pop ditty whose hushed vocals, obscure lyrics, and ghostly background vocals presume a dig at «depth», but I do not sense any real depth — just a guy mur­muring some barely coherent nonsense to the mellow sound of acoustic guitars and pianos. No hooks to speak of, no musical textures to be astounded at, and what is it exactly that you are trying to get across to me, Mr. Hansen? What I see is just some grayish ambience, as if you wanted to capture some light and some darkness in the same bottle and give me both, but then you accidentally shook 'em up, and now it's sort of undrinkable. No taste.

This is pretty much the same reaction I get from everything else: a total feel of «middle of the road» where you really keep wishing he'd stuck to this side or that. On ʽBlue Moonʼ, the first single from the album, he sings that "I'm so tired of being alone", but there is no musical indi­cation in the song that he is alone, and if he is tired, it is more like he is tired of finding great ideas for songs rather than anything else. And song after song, we get the same unmemorable acoustic patterns, the same walls covered by simplistic synthesized or orchestral carpeting, the same mock-transcendental «woo-hoos» and «aaa-haas» from the backup singers, and, guess what, not even a single example of great usage of the bass guitar (dark bass grooves were an integral part of Sea Change, but not here).

Oh, it all sounds suitably nice, and it may even all sound suitably adequate to Beck's current state of mind, but it makes me sad and disappointed to see him in this state of mind. Even when he opts for a «grand» closure (ʽWaking Lightʼ), the crescendo effects seem boring and predictable, and, most importantly, devoid of real tension and energy — and this is the first Beck album in my experience where, after three listens in a row, I was unable to memorize any of the songs (with ʽMorningʼ as the only exception, and even that mainly because I really love that use of falsetto on the verses). Is it the kind of album that could be expected to subtly grow on you after a miriad of listens? But we are not living in an epoch where one would have time for that. And even if we were, this is Beck Hansen we are talking about, the guy who used to be the fastest gunslinger in the West. Sure, even the fastest gunslingers eventually grow old, but I was sort of unprepared that the aging process would be so quick.

If we judge the record on its own merits, removed from any possible context, it is inoffensive and generally pretty. But as a part of the curve, it is a catastrophe — a pretentious statement about having nothing to say that comes from a washed-up artist who really has nothing left to say, and knows not how to say it properly. Okay, «washed-up» is a harsh and undeserved word; maybe it is just a temporary blunder, and no sooner than Beck renounces this stupid idea of a «sequel» and starts bringing back in his usual batch of wonder producers, he may be able to get back on the right track. But the signs are not at all auspicious — when an album is as empty of meaning and feeling as Morning Phase seems to be, one can't help fearing that this particular thumbs down, the first one I've ever had the mispleasure of giving Beck, will be far from the last.

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10,000 Maniacs: Music From The Motion Picture

10,000 MANIACS: MUSIC FROM THE MOTION PICTURE (2013)

1) I Don't Love You Too; 2) When We Walked On Clouds; 3) Gold; 4) Triangles; 5) Live For The Time Of Your Life; 6) It's A Beautiful Life; 7) Whippoorwill; 8) Fine Line; 9) Tiny Arrows; 10) Downhill; 11) Chautauqua Moon.

Okay, so I promised to let you know, after all, and yes, our favorite band, Ten Billion Maniacs, are back with a brand new album, although maybe not even all the fans know of its existence. Yes, three of the original members (the rhythm section and Dennis Drew on keyboards) still re­main, and, after a long period of absence, Mary Ramsey is back, too. The late Robert Buck has been replaced by Jeff Erickson, who not only handles the guitar duties, but also sings lead vocals on a couple of numbers — is that a first for the band or what?

Those who actually liked Love Among The Ruins, the band's friendly, but uninspired attempt at carrying on after the loss of Merchant, will be pleased to know that very little has changed — as of the early 2010s, guess what? they are still busy writing and recording friendly, but uninspired music. Mary Ramsey sounds warm and lovable, more like a young happy mother cuddling her child than a moody, insecure, guilt-ridden young girl; and her violin always stays in tune with her vocals. The guitars and keyboards breathe with folksy life, never subject to overproduction or encumbered with smart modern sound effects. Even Dennis Drew, at liberty to do what he wants, gets a lead vocal on the somberly waltzing ʽDownhillʼ, and it's a likable middle-aged «croak» (or «quack»?) that fits the song's mood perfectly. So?..

So the only problem is that, just like before, the individual songs never stick. Every second is more or less equally «pretty» as every next or preceding one, and if this band never «tore it up» when it was young, why should we even expect that it could add more dynamism when it got old? The overall genteel atmosphere knocks on your door with the opening seconds of ʽI Don't Love You Tooʼ (a message expressed by Ramsey with the outmost courteousness and gallantry) and fizzles away with the closing seconds of ʽChautaqua Moonʼ (a little chamber chat between violin and viola, probably overdubbed by Mary as she is credited for both). And rarely shifts to anything else, and practically never congeals into any memorable hooks.

On ʽIt's A Beautiful Lifeʼ, they dabble in a bit of experimentation, changing from folk-pop to reggae-pop, while the lyrics of the song present a slightly reworked version of ʽBig Rock Candy Mountainʼ. They pull it off without embarrassment, but reggae is a limiting form by itself, and they have no time or strength to do anything «special» with it other than offering a brief repose from the more standard formula. Other than that, I think I could only loosely single out ʽWhen We Walked On Cloudsʼ, with its focus on fast acoustic picking, «cloudy» organ background, and dreamy nostalgic singing, as a humble highlight that produces a «deeper» feeling than anything else on the album. But only loosely.

That said, I reiterate that the band still sounds adorable, and, at any rate, more enamored of and more sensitive towards this kind of music than most indie bands of the 21st century trying out this pastoral, idyllic, inoffensive brand of folk-rock. It might, indeed, be even better than Love Among The Ruins, since the band has aged and wisened up, and 10,000 Maniacs always tried to sound like they were «so much older then», and now they're sort of getting adequate, even if they do it at the expense of a near-total loss of songwriting skill. (Okay, I'm just beginning to get something back from the ringing electric riffs of ʽWhippoorwhillʼ... but it's such a thin, «wimpy» sound, it's going to take a while to woo these ears).

Anyway, no thumbs up, no thumbs down — strictly for the fans, but if you're a fan, seek it out while there still remains a micro-blip of it on the news radar. And that title: it's almost as if they knew they were releasing an album designed strictly for background listening!

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Alan Parsons Project: The Sicilian Defence

ALAN PARSONS PROJECT: THE SICILIAN DEFENCE (1981/2014)

1) P-K4; 2) P-Qb4; 3) Kt-KB3; 4) ...Kt-QB3; 5) P-Q4; 6) PxP; 7) KtxP; 8) Kt-B3; 9) Kt-QB3; 10) P-Q3.

I am not even sure if this stuff deserves a separate review, but since it now exists as an officially released separate album — albeit only as a «bonus» part of the newly released 11-CD boxset that contains all of the Project's albums — it probably does merit a few words and a chuckle, if only to show that these guys did have their unique brand of «humor», nothing about which was tech­nically funny, but still, it does help to learn about this considering how «stiff» we usually consi­der these Parsons and Woolfson guys.

So, apparently, the story goes that in 1981, the two were locked in a formal battle with Arista over some contract details, and, unsatisfied as they were, decided to get out of the contract by submitting one last due album that they'd record in three days, rather than the several months that it usually took their sense of perfectionism to be pacified. So they went into the studio, quickly threw together a bunch of instrumental tracks made on-the-spot, named them after various chess moves, figuratively called the album The Sicilian Defence (in which Arista people, apparently, played white and the Project played black), and submitted the results.

Said results, as the rumor went, frightened the Arista people so much that they gave up without putting up too much of a fight, renewed Parsons' and Woolfson's contract on profitable terms, and kept Alan with them all the way up to his first solo album. The Sicilian Defence, in the mean­time, was permanently shelved (just as the duo had hoped it would), and vanished off the radar com­pletely for more than thirty years. Small bits and pieces were occasionally showed to the public, but on the whole, Alan had no plans of ever releasing the whole thing, and probably the only rea­son why it finally saw the light of day was acute demand on the part of devoted fans — just the kind of people who'd want to buy the complete boxset in order to get to the juicy bonus.

Now here is why it may be important to add those few words. The album got this reputation for being a «musical joke», or even a display of «musical hooliganry», and I am sure I even saw the word «atonal» used somewhere in a brief description. This may lead one into thinking that Alan and Eric had really let their hair down on this one, making something of a ʽRevolution No. 9ʼ, or of a Metal Machine Music, and since «musical hooliganry» is definitely not the kind of thing with which we are accustomed to associate those stern, glossy British gentlemen, this can create an atmosphere of intrigue — indeed, it might even make one spend all that extra money on the boxset just to hear what all the hoopla was about.

More than likely, you will be seriously disappointed. There is nothing «atonal», or «rebellious», or «hooliganish» about this record. And, in fact, there couldn't be, since it had no gestation period and had to be made in three days. Instead, it sounds more or less just like you'd expect an Alan Parsons Project record, made in three days, to sound. A bunch of instrumental numbers — all of them rhythmic, usually set to simple drum machine patterns, all of them played either on synthe­sizer or on piano, all of them probably largely improvised, but mostly in standard keys, using standard chords, and generating the usual melancholic aura associated with the Project. Nothing particularly exciting — and nothing particularly «Awful» with a large A. Boring, as a matter of fact: just plain old boring.

The two longest tracks, ʽP-Qb4ʼ and ʽKt-QB3ʼ, are piano pieces, of which the former, also known as ʽElsie's Themeʼ, was earlier released in truncated form as a bonus track on Eve, and for good reason: it has the prettiest melody on the album, nocturnal and elegant, that may deserve salvation, even if six minutes is still overkill. ʽKt-QB3ʼ is even longer, mainly consists of one single jazzy theme looped on endless repeat, and could, perhaps, work as a rhythm part for a more elaborate composition, but nothing else.

The rest is basically just Parsons dicking around with synthesizers without much forethought or afterthought — a couple of the tracks sounding like, say, an early underworked demo for Pink Floyd's ʽOn The Runʼ (maybe he did drag out one of these, I have no idea), and others sounding like equally underworked demos for the Project's own stuff, usually with one or two basic mu­sical ideas per track. Nothing revealing in here, except that it might be interesting to hear, very quickly, what kinds of things Parsons could come up with when working on autopilot. Well, it ain't Blonde On Blonde, where composing and recording on-the-spot are concerned, that one thing at least is for sure.

Best thing about it all is we now know what exactly is Alan Parsons' idea of the proverbial «al­bum of fart noises» — apparently, these guys are so stuffy, they cannot even allow themselves to fart anything other than MIDI grooves and piano romances. Yet I cannot officially condemn the album with a thumbs down, since we have all been warned and there has never been one single good word on the part of Alan himself about the record. Clearly, he didn't even release it in order to make an extra buck — most likely, he just wanted to implode the «legend», so that people no longer harass him about the «legendary lost Alan Parsons Project album». So maybe this review can offer a little modest help with this purpose.

Bobby Womack: The Bravest Man In The Universe

BOBBY WOMACK: THE BRAVEST MAN IN THE UNIVERSE (2012)

1) The Bravest Man In The Universe; 2) Please Forgive My Heart; 3) Deep River; 4) Dayglo Reflection; 5) What­ever Happened To The Times; 6) Stupid Introlude; 7) Stupid; 8) If There Wasn't Something There; 9) Love Is Gonna Lift You Up; 10) Nothin' Can Save Ya; 11) Jubilee (Don't Let Nobody Turn You Around).

Flip forward almost thirty years. For almost a decade after his Beverly Glen albums, Bobby went on riding from one short-lived record contract with a little-known label to another, releasing al­bums that never charted, rarely attracted any (positive) critical attention, and went out of print so quickly that, in the end, I sort of gave up upon trying to locate them, especially since there is re­latively little hope that the chase would be well worth the catch. Then, after 1994's boldly titled Resurrection (which was anything but), he ceased writing songs altogether, and, apart from a Christmas album from time to time, sank into near-complete seclusion — not that I blame him at all, considering the dire fate of modern R&B, a genre Bobby had worked so much for.

Then something really weird happened, one of those accidental turns of events that generate an auspicious opportunity — none other than Damon Albarn of Blur and Gorillaz fame contacted Bobby with a suggestion to work together. Apparently, the man was a fan of Womack's classic material, yet simply being a fan is one thing, and actually going out all the way is quite another: an Albarn / Womack collaboration, without prior notice, would be quite an unlikely combination. It was Bobby's daughter (a closet Gorillaz fan?) who convinced her father to accept the invitation, and this first led to Bobby adding vocals to several Gorillaz tracks — and then, in return, to Al­barn co-writing and co-producing a brand new Bobby Womack album, his first and, so far, only one in the 21st century.

Based on this information alone, you can easily tell without even hearing it that The Bravest Man In The Universe would be somewhat of a «special» record. Critics fell all over it, not ne­cessarily because they loved it, but probably because they'd never heard anything quite like it. And, indeed, the record defies simple analysis — each of its ingredients is not at all special or even all that good in itself, but together, Albarn and Womack create a puzzling combination that you can love or hate, but cannot ignore.

Almost in its entirety, the album is electronic — loops, beats, cycles, lots of programming, the usual thing, not too surprising, considering that it all stemmed from Gorillaz anyway. On top of these electronic grooves, which are usually moody and minimalistic, Womack records his vocal melodies — shaky and a bit gargly in an elderly manner, but still capable of an emotional grip — to work out a series of reflections on life, love, the past, the future, man's destiny, and even on those who use the Lord's name in vain, ʽStupidʼ being his lyrical answer to Genesis' ʽJesus He Knows Meʼ, in a way. The two are aided in this (un)godly mix by Albarn's co-worker Richard Russell, and big trendy femme-fatale™ star Lana del Rey makes a guest appearance on ʽDayglo Reflectionʼ; other than that, the studio is empty — quite an unusual deal for Bobby.

Does it «work»? I don't know. In all honesty, I would say that it doesn't. It is intriguing to see Albarn take the old chum in the studio and provide him with a background of drum machines, bleeps, pings, and synthesized sonic veils (he does play some live instruments from time to time, too, but they are not so much upfront) — but none of this stuff seems tailor-made to suit Bobby's style. The electronic and vocal melodies are synchronized, yet it is hard for me to imagine Bobby drawing actual inspiration from these sounds and using it for his own vocal delivery. Albarn says that he gave instrumental demos to Womack, who would then write lyrics around them — I do wonder what those demos were and whether they were not simply played on acoustic guitar, be­cause it is hard for me to imagine Bobby putting lyrics and vocal melodies on top of these elec­tronic arrangements. (It is even harder for me to imagine Bobby, with his life-long penchant for guitar and funky groove, liking Albarn's and Russell's production, but at least officially he did).

Nevertheless, at least these arrangements try to be creative, unlike, say, the generic Eighties pro­duction on The Poet series — the title track, for instance, puts a thin, moody veil of strings and some minimalistic piano tinkles on top of the programmed percussion, giving the song an am­bient feel, that is, something previously unthinkable for a Bobby Womack song. The title is for­mally cut out of the song's refrain — "the bravest man in the universe is the one who has forgiven first" — but could easily be seen to refer to Bobby himself, of course, as it must have taken him quite a bit of bravery to go along with such a radical reinvention of himself.

«Classic» Bobby makes a brief appearance on the traditional tune ʽDeep Riverʼ, where the man is featured solo with an acoustic guitar — barely two minutes in all, just to give us a brief reminder of what it used to be like, yet it manages to take a good shot at winning top prize in that short time span, especially when placed next to ʽDayglo Reflectionʼ, a self-consciously «mystical-ro­mantic» composition where the main hero is not Bobby, but rather the perfidiously crowned «siren of the 2010s», large-lipped lady Lana del Rey that, according to everything I've heard and seen of her, is the perfect embodiment of phoniness in «sensual pop art».

Unfortunately, this is not the only song where there is too much going on and not nearly enough Bobby Womack — upbeat «dance» tunes like ʽLove Is Gonna Lift You Upʼ and ʽJubileeʼ also sound more like Albarn and Russell's take on making an electronic facsimile of classic R&B than songs that merit and justify Womack's presence on them. (ʽJubileeʼ is kinda fun, though, with its big badass bass drum pounding out the tribal beat like crazy — the one track on the album where, instead of scratching or wracking your head, you might just be tempted to lose it for a bit.).

But on most of the ballads, Bobby does sing as if he cared, and his ruminations on the world, the times, and even the exorbitant fake preachers sound exactly like they should — troubled, but tightly controlled and technically sound confessions of a worn and torn, but still viable old man. Actually, the age is only being betrayed by a little extra hoarseness and maybe just a tad lessened range (which was never that big to begin with): no decrepit relic here, even if he has to struggle a bit to strike out the anger necessary to fuel ʽStupidʼ (that's the one about the preachers).

I give the album a thumbs up, first and foremost, not for «quality» as such, but for its unusual­ness (I was going to write «novelty factor», but we are talking of a feat rather than a gimmick here, so that might be a little demeaning). The very fact that something like this came out in 2012 deserves recognition — and, let's face it, it could have been worse in all possible respects (even Lana del Rey at least has her own brand of phoniness, where they could have invited some com­pletely faceless chick instead, out of millions available). The Bravest Man In The Universe should not be judged as a collection of songs — it's more of an experimental modern art lick on an old canvas, where some will pretend to going gaga over the modern art, while others will simply admire the good old art of weaving canvas. Personally, I'm just glad the old guy can still sing with so much feeling — and a big thank you to Damon Albarn at least for ensuring that the arrangements always stay minimalistic enough to let that voice soar and flutter all over them.

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