Month: June 2005

Terence Trent D’Arby: Neither Fish Nor Flesh (1989)

ttd_fish

Let’s make a concept album, where the concept is me.

Purchase this album: Amazon

THE SCENE: In 1988 Terence Trent D’Arby rocketed from nowhere to become the artist of the moment. His debut album Introducing The Hardline sold millions of records on both sides of the Atlantic and his single “Wishing Well” went to number one in England and America. His musical stock-in-trade was Sam Cooke-styled R&B rave-ups, and in classic R&B mode he mostly sang about women. He was also quite cocky about his musical talents and gave great interviews about his utter, utter brilliance.

But that same year he met his idol Brian Wilson and sang on Wilson’s first solo album. Brian Wilson hadn’t created a complete album since 1966 when he composed The Beach Boys’ Pet Sounds, the original rock’n’roll departure album. While working with a man who represented the zenith of music freedom, D’Arby must have sensed that this was time to ask, no, demand complete artist control for his next album. And so he set off to create (deep breath now) Terence Trent D’Arby’s Neither Fish Nor Flesh: A Soundtrack of Love, Faith, Hope & Destruction.

T.T.D.N.F.N.F:A.S.O.L.F.H & D. represents D’Arby’s state of mind circa 1989. “I’m concerned with the fate of mankind” he seemed to say, “as well as maintaining my stature as King Of All Macks”. And as the sole composer, arranger, producer and primary musician, it’s truly his world.

“Declaration: Neither Fish Nor Flesh” begins with silence, lots of it. A good half minute passes before any sound is audible and then it’s a slow bloom of liquid guitar fuzz and tuned feedback while D’Arby low-talks about being neither fish nor flesh. In “I Have Faith In These Desolate Times” he shares his world optimism over nothing but the delicate plinking of a koto water harp. It has the lilting spirit of a unicorn gallivanting through the forest, at least until the end where it completely turns into a “James Brown meets Foetus” groove.

D’Arby’s precision arrangement skills are evident in the next piece, “It Feels So Good To Love Someone Like You”. It’s a masterwork of composition as he creates a dreamy exotic island from flutes, sitar drones, waterfall sounds and whale samples, and he powers down his usual hard-charging vocal attack into “caress” mode. It’s the song by which to slowly eat honeyed fruit off your lover’s hand.

Quite unexpectedly D’Arby pulls off a quintessentially contemporary sounding pop song. “Billy Don’t Fall” is the hit single that never was, perhaps because it’s a pop tune about AIDS and gay tolerance, recorded back in 1989 when AIDS was considered a karmic death sentence:

Billy was a young boy
Who’s fate did decree
That he would like only other boys
So being with a boy came to him naturally
Billy was a green boy
His thoughts so naive
He wondered why he was so victimised
And his fear brought him close to me suddenly
But
Billy my friend
Don’t fall in love with me
I’m not that kind of guy
But I’ll stand by your side
If you need me to be

The album’s centerpiece is “This Side of Love”, a bass-free classic soul carnival ride with train-track tension that gives the feeling it could fall apart any moment, much like love itself! (Man he’s good). Although this train is essentially just guitar and drums, it features cameo appearances by nearly every other instrument in existence, as if they were standing outside the gate and waving at the song as it passed by. Lyrically he’s wondering how he even got into this situation:

We’re on a roundabout whirl of scorn
The demons are smiling and the angels snoring
I feel like a stepchild Caesar that’s been
Beaten and bruised to please her
Wearing a rusted ring of thorns
What have I done to piss the Gods off
(To end up on) This side of Love?

The Alice-in-Funkyland style crescendos with “Roly Poly”. Double-time drums run backward throughout the song, which combine with shimmering strings and wordless background crooning to maintain an intoxicating sense of dizziness. D’Arby layers on the vocals till it reaches madness level, and then he keeps adding other rewind sounds until you just submit to its power. He also beats on a cardboard box, just because he can.

Neither Fish Nor Flesh is exceptionally well-arranged and mixed, and does provide proof that TTD was nearly as talented as he had been claiming.

THE FALLOUT: His egotistical pushiness had already made him enemies at his record label, who didn’t hear a hit single and withdrew nearly all promotional support. D’Arby also fought to have Fish released during the competitive Christmas season, which all but assured the album would hit the stores dead on arrival. As a result he didn’t release a follow-up album for four years.

Neither Fish Nor Flesh is available from Amazon and you can sample tracks here:

Self-indulgence has rarely sounded so charming. See you next Wednesday.

NEXT WEEK: A.R. Kane brings the ruckus into shoegazer culture.

Parliament: Osmium (1970)

parliament_osmium

If the Funk is ahead of its time, does it make a sound?

THE SCENE: According to George Clinton, the five-man ex-doo-wop group Parliament performed polite music you could play for your mother, while their five-man backing band Funkadelic was the group that would scare your mother into cardiac arrest. The fact that all ten people were in the same band was simply a matter of convenience.

In 1970, even though Funkadelic was already signed to the Detroit-based Westbound label, Clinton signed Parliament to the Detroit-based Invictus label and delivered Osmium. Parliament had released several smoothed-out hit singles in the previous years, so the raw and roughneck Osmium had the effect of discovering that your seemingly normal parents were actually two-headed Martian warlords.

Although this album preceded their use of squiggly synths, alter egos and sci-fi concepts, Parliament still had loads of goofball energy and naïve eccentricity. Half the album is co-written by folk artist and label mate Ruth Copeland, and her straightforward melodicism and religious themes make a downright bizarre platform for the funk. “Oh Lord, Why Lord/Prayer” is a harpsichord and choir-led hymn based on Pachelbel “Canon” and is performed completely straight! No joking about Jesus this time around.

“Put a Little Love In Your Life” is a mini-progressive rock opera detailing the journey of a would-be star, with enough mood changes to rival a Broadway song. Slow organ riffs merge into spazzed-out guitar solos, voices drop in and out, tempos speed up at will, and yet it holds together.

Parliament gets its Nashville on with “Little Ole Country Boy”, a hyped-up country-and-western song complete with pedal steel guitar solo, washboard percussion and lots of yodeling. Yes, yodeling. Parliament also finds a place to showcase the bagpipes, of all instruments, on the beautiful dirge “The Silent Boatman”.

Peppered between these mid-tempo quasi-show tunes are lots of crazed funk songs. “Funky Woman” is an exceptionally tough call-and-response about personal hygiene that showcases guitarist Eddie Hazel’s sizzling tone and Clinton’s grizzled humor:

She hung them in the air
Funky woman
The air said this ain’t fair
Funky woman

She hung them in the sun
Funky woman
The sun began to run
Funky woman

She threw them on the line
Funky woman
The line, it started to cryin’
Funky woman

She threw them in the yard
Funky woman
The yard, it cried, Oh Lord!

The rockabilly “My Automobile” is a cute re-enactment of the songs’ own creation, with the band sitting around the studio harmonizing top-of–their-head lyrics, followed by the “real” version of the song. Osmium also contains an early version of Funkadelics’ “I Call My Baby Pussycat”, a naughty crunch rocker about, er, cats:

Now I’m a tom cat and you’re the pussycat
And I’m just sittin’ here, licking my paw
Now I’m the tom cat and you’re my little old pussycat
Why don’t you scratch me on my back with your claw?
…
I don’t know, but I’ve been told
That dogs are man’s best friend
Wild and warm is my baby’s love
My kitten is where it’s at

The album has a low-budget and fun country charm with a surprising amount of restraint, considering the source. Neither Parliament nor Funkadelic were ever this peculiar again.

THE FALLOUT: Even the band didn’t think an album this eclectic would sell many copies, and they were right. It did OK in Detroit but that was it. Parliament lost their recording deal but they were picked up by Casablanca in 1974 and released Up For the Down Stroke, which began a long string of bagpipe-free and high-selling albums.

Osmium is available at Amazon and you can also listen to tracks here:

See you next Wednesday.

NEXT WEEK: Terence Trent D’Arby does his Brian Wilson impression and brings his career to a screeching halt.

TV On The Radio: Desperate Youth, Blood Thirsty Babes (2004)

tv_desperate

Are you ready for doo-wop-tronica?

Purchase this album: Amazon

THE SCENE: In 2003 Brooklyn duo TV On The Radio released their first EP Young Liars, a rich nugget of distorted instrumentation and crystal-clear vocals including a doo-wop remake of The Pixies “Mr. Grieves”. Energized by a fistful of nice reviews and a supportive record label they released their first full-length recording the following year, the even stranger Desperate Youth, Blood Thirsty Babes.

Now a trio with guitarist/vocalist Kyp Malone, TV On The Radio continues to politely invert the hierarchy of modern rock songs. For starters lead singer Tunde Adibempe can really sing, and he drips multiple layers of his honeyed voice on every song. Secondly, there are no lead instruments. The guitars usually act as melodic percussion, while the drums sometimes drop out completely, as they do on the trance-like “Staring at the Sun”. Its droning rhythms cascade in waves while Adibempe’s stacked falsetto swims through the sound:

you’re staring at the sun
you’re standing in the sea
your mouth is open wide
you’re trying hard to breath
the water’s at your neck
there’s lightning in your teeth
your body’s over me

The lyrical tone of urban alienation and disorientation is present in every song, yet it’s tempered with melancholia and flashes of fun. Even the first song “The Wrong Way”, which begins with what sounds like a CD player skipping over an electrical hum, turns into a happy sax-filled shuffle while still keeping the CD player skipping sound intact.

What sets this record apart is the amount of soulfulness that’s rarely present any modern music. Dig the tribal drums of “Poppy”, the call-and-response guitars of “Bomb Yourself” and the barbershop quartet of “Ambulance”. An a cappella tour de force, “Ambulance” beautifully explains one couple’s view of interdependence:

You’re to blame
For wasted words of sad refrain
Oh let them take me where they may
Believe me when I say

I will be your accident if you will be my ambulance
And I will be your screech and crash if you will be my crutch and cast
And I will be your one more time if you will be my one last chance
oh fall for me

The interdependence of warm, gospel voices and clinical, shadowy sounds is unique to TV On The Radio.

THE FALLOUT: International critical acclaim. Opening gigs for The Pixies. A new album is in the works, as a sextet. Doo-wop-tronica lives on!

Desperate Youth, Blood Thirsty Babes is available from Amazon and you can sample tracks here:

See you next Wednesday.

NEXT WEEK: Funkadelic pretends to be Parliament and confuses the nation.

New Kingdom: Paradise Don’t Come Cheap (1996)

newkingdom_paradise

Way beyond funky, this one’s downright grimy.

Purchase this album: Amazon

THE SCENE: In 1993 hip-hop duo New Kingdom released the lo-fi and poetic Heavy Load during the dawn of Death Row Records “G-Funk era”. Although it was critically well received Heavy Load wasn’t remotely gangsta and thus attracted little attention from the gangsta-buying public. Undaunted, partners Nosaj and SebStop spent three years crafting their followup, the hickory-smoked masterpiece Paradise Don’t Come Cheap.

Reckless and scorching, it’s an hour-long ride in the passenger seat of a ramshackle big rig on the hottest day of the year, and you’re all out of lemonade. Musically thick and vast it blends live half-speed hiphop beats with all sorts of pedal steel guitars, organs and dust. That’s right, dust. I don’t how one records the sound of microscopic layers of sediment but it’s on every track and it sounds fantastic.

Both Nosaj and SebStop don’t rap as much as rasp over the tracks, as if Tom Waits and Ol’ Dirty Bastard got drunk and planned a road trip, evidenced by the first song “Mexico or Bust”:

Mexico is callen me and damn if it ain’t all in me.
To pack my bags and grab a crate. Ain’t nuthin better than an unplanned escape.
Hell ain’t catchin up to me no way. I’m taken backroads riding side of the bus.
Wavin at runaways. Wanderlust has got us. Both lookin for a better day.

The guitars sound like lazy rattlesnakes uncoiling in the noonday sun as the drums lurch over a slowed down Texas-two step beat. Amazing.

The title track “Paradise Don’t Come Cheap” is a theme song in search of a movie, with its 007-esque spy horns and its own referencing of cinema desires:

Rented one bedroom upstairs in the attic. Off the wall murphy style bed.
Old black and white read nuthin but static. Caliber she lay like a lady side my head.
Whisper in my ear justify my bad habits. Mexican Gold had me sinkin in the mattress.
Careful what you wish for cuz it just might happen. As strange as it looks..the stranger it seem. It feels as if I’d been stuck inside a movie screen.

Lyrically the songs are about changing ones’ scenery, whether its surviving Armageddon (“Horse Latitudes”), traveling to outer space (“Journey To The Sun) or merely being “Suspended In Air”, all delivered by a unique and gritty flow that sounds ageless and primordial. On “Terror Mad Visionary” they come across like outlaws transmitting secret directions over a cheap AM radio, while on “Unicorns Were Horses” they testify like preachers stuck in an overly hot revival tent.

Their unique voices and twisted poetry cuts through the swamp of dusky sonics, which is no easy feat. At any given time all the turntable scratches, metal power chords and echoed beats merge into one pulsating, throbbing mass of sound. The sound of escaping from Hell, or perhaps escaping to Hell.

THE FALLOUT: It was a hit with alternative rock critics, who get their records for free. MTV gave “Mexico or Bust” a few spins but Paradise Don’t Come Cheap went mostly ignored by the public at large. In 1998 their label, Gee Street, was acquired by V2 and many artists were, um, dropped. But in 2005 New Kingdom finally announced plans to record their follow-up. Yay!

Paradise Don’t Come Cheap is out of print worldwide except for Japan, where they’ve always had an appreciation for odd music. If you don’t feel like paying import prices, used CD versions are easy to find, like right here. It makes great traveling music. You can also listen to samples here:

See you next Wednesday.

NEXT WEEK: TV On The Radio infiltrates indie rock by wielding the power of electronic doo-wop.

Herbie Hancock: Sextant (1973)

herbie_sextant

Jazz can swing, and sing and sting, but what happens when jazz goes ping?

Purchase this album: Amazon

THE SCENE: By 1973 keyboardist Herbie Hancock had recorded ten albums with Miles Davis, including the historic free-jazz sessions of Bitches Brew. That recording must have of woken up his inner freak-child because his own music started to steadily mutate away from traditional song structures toward dense aural sculptures, light on hooks but ultra-heavy on grooves and atmosphere. Hancock’s future of the funk also used a literal ton of bleeding-edge synthesizers, mostly tweaked to produce unearthly bleeps, blops and, er, pings.

After recording three albums of challenging and poorly selling releases for Warner Brothers, Hancock and his band Mwandishi moved to Columbia Records and unleashed Sextant, a fresh blend of African polyrhythms, melodic brass and layer after layer of tripped-out keyboard sounds.

“Rain Dance” begins with, well, imagine the sound of water slowly drip, drip, dripping onto the metal floor of an empty submarine. This submarine then suddenly drops 20,000 leagues beneath the sea of shrieking horn stabs, switches on the acoustic bass propulsion jets and cruises through the waters of electronic jellyfish and percussive sea critters.

The journey continues on land with “Hidden Shadows”, an arid trek through a rocky terrain populated with dive-bombing synthetic mosquitoes and bubbling percussion volcanoes that erupt drum geysers without warning. The rhythm section gallops quickly as if they are being chased by unknown assailants. Keyboard smears and horn solos hang in the air like angry buzzards circling its prey.

“Hornets” takes you deep inside the rainforest of wild, untamed instrumentation. It’s a twenty minute battle for jungle supremacy as every musician fights for control of the song, trying to ride the humid wave of its primacy while avoiding being sucked into the undertow. The horns and drums maintain a valiant catfight but Hancock’s wall of synths eventually outflanks all comers with a continual venom of exotic textures, both oppressive and effervescent.

Nowadays we’d call this music electronica or ambient, but in 1973 it was called “an unlistenable mound of dung that’s best ignored”.

THE FALLOUT: Sextant didn’t sell and the resulting tour was not well attended so Mwandishi called it day. Hancock focused his next musical project on merging jazz with funk, which was a novel idea in 1974. That album, Headhunters, became the largest selling jazz album of all-time. How’s that for a career rebound?

Sextant is currently in print from Sony and available from your better CD retailers, like this one. It’s the perfect headphone music for that odd trip to the aquarium. You can also listen to tracks here:

See you next Wednesday.

NEXT WEEK: In the streak-free world of major label hip-hop, New Kingdom brings beats to the grime.