ARTHUR BROWN: VAMPIRE SUITE (2003)
1) Introduction; 2) Vampire
Club; 3) SAS; 4) Africa; 5) Maybe My Soul; 6) In This Love; 7) Confession; 8)
Vampire Love; 9) Completion; 10) Divers; 11) Re-Vamp Your Soul; 12) Isness Is
My Business; 13) Stay.
Arthur's fascination with vampires comes as a
surprise, and perhaps a disappointing one. He'd never expressed tremendous
interest in the subject before — or have I missed something? — yet there he is
now, once again crediting «The Crazy World Of Arthur Brown», this time, for a
complex, relatively plotless story of the fates, characters, and habits of
vampires in the modern world: the story itself comes as a fifty-minute
«audiobook» reading on the bonus CD (which I, honestly, had no will or patience
to sit through), while the first and main CD acts as a «rock musical» loosely
based on the story.
But I mean, vampires?
Isn't a concept album about vampires
a bit too kitschy even for the likes
of Mr. Brown? Shouldn't it be relegated to the likes of Alice Cooper? (And,
speaking of Alice, the Vegasy glitz of the opening number, ʽVampire Clubʼ,
quickly brings on memories of ʽWelcome To My Nightmareʼ). Moving away from all
those concept albums about space travel and humanity's post-apocalyptic fate
into the realm of bloodsucking, garlic strings, and silver bullets?
I must admit it is a little anticlimactic, what with the vampire subject beaten so
firmly into the ground and all. But at this point in his career — come to think
of it, at any point in his career —
Arthur couldn't really care less about the particular referential topic of his
creativity. His meager sales and near-negative recognizability (how many people
in the world would know or remember that he was still alive in 2003, let alone
making records?) would not increase or decrease depending on whether he was
writing and singing about vampires or about superstring theory. And if the guy
likes vampires, well, why not garner a bit of inspiration from vampires if it
helps make some decent music?
The project is no longer acoustic — a serious
musical needs more than an acoustic guitar and some aboriginal Australian
woodwinds, after all — but neither is it «rock'n'rollish»: pianos, electronics,
and a heavy brass section matter much more on this album than distorted
electric guitars. It does, indeed, in many respects recall different stages of
Alice Cooper's career (be it from the Welcome
To My Nightmare period, the DaDa
period, or some of his recent records), but the bluesy and R'n'B-ish shades are
all unmistakably Brownian.
Curiously, the best stuff here are the soulful numbers — songs that make me
forget all about the context and just freely enjoy the music. ʽMaybe My Soulʼ,
for instance, is one of the most uplifting R&B anthems in the man's career
— with a glorious buildup from verse to chorus, excellent «old-school» brass
parts, and a totally triumphant vocal delivery for a sixty-year old eccentric
white male with a complicated medical history. And then, immediately after the
exuberant optimism of ʽMaybe My Soulʼ, on comes the cold shower of the
desperate soul-blues ʽIn This Loveʼ, an equally impressive stunner. Vampires?
Maybe if you tune in to the lyrics very
closely, but all I hear is exuberance in number one and desperation in number
two.
The «kitschy» numbers do not work quite as
well, but ʽVampire Clubʼ is still a nice and catchy Vegasy romp; ʽVampire Loveʼ
is supposed to tele-transport you to 1997, the age of "those synthesizers
and drum machines", Arthur gleefully ironizes in the introduction to the
song (but why 1997, I wonder? the track does sound somewhat 1997-ish, but
wouldn't 1987 be a better bet for such a «nostalgic» trip?) — and it is a cool
mix of rhythmic catchiness and absurd theatricality, not to mention Arthur's
old penchant for combining the uncombinable, such as modernistic synthesizer
loops and very old-school organ solos. And the retro-funk of ʽAfricaʼ is quite
hard to get out of your head once it gets around to the "Africa, the
cradle of civilization" chorus (even if "Afr-EEH-ca", with the
accent on the second syllable, gets a bit annoying after a while).
The only true misstep comes at the end: Arthur
has a long and dubious tradition of recycling his old (or not so old) material,
and ʽStayʼ here is a remake of ʽGabrielʼ from the last album, with the precise
acoustic rhythms replaced by mushy keyboard atmospherics, the steady drums
replaced with machines and «tribal percussion» scattered all over the place,
and the grinning, sarcastic vocals of the original forgotten in favor of a
sterner, less humorous delivery. Not a very good ending for an album that does
have its fair share of strong moments.
The whole thing never sounds as «unusual» as Tantric Lover, and does not look nearly
as convincing — a half-labour of love at best, compared to its predecessor.
But the well-balanced mix of humor and seriousness, the stylistic diversity, the
never-ending freshness of the vocals, the refusal to bow to modern terms and
conditions, all of this means one thing: The Crazy World of Arthur Brown is
still alive and well, and you do not need to be a loyal follower of this guy
for thirty-five years in order to enjoy it. Yes, a thumbs up by all means — I am glad, though, that the record never
had a werewolf sequel (although, come to think of it, the idea of Arthur Brown
howling at the moon should be quite natural).
Check "The Vampire Suite" (MP3) on Amazon
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