Category: Rhythm and Blues

Neneh Cherry: Man (1996)

neneh_man

As in “Man, what ever happened to her?”

Purchase this album: Amazon

THE SCENE: Neneh Cherry’s unification of hip-hop and energetic pop music made her an international superstar with the release of 1991’s Raw Like Sushi, but her toned-down followup, 1993’s Homebrew, was an artistic advance yet a commercial retreat. And if you’re American, that was probably the last time you heard from her.

The rest of the world, however, was privileged to receive Man in 1996, a honey-coated slab of soulful electronica. Co-written and produced by her husband Cameron McVey, it sparkles with intellect and sensuality while decimating you with hard beats and grunge guitar.

The buttery smooth strings of “Woman” move like honey just before it drips out of the container, full of sweetness and anticipation, while Cherry reaffirms her mission statement:

You gotta be fortunate
You gotta be lucky now
I was just sitting here
Thinking good and bad
But I’m the kinda woman
That was built to last
They tried erasing me
But they couldn’t wipe out my past

“Hornbeam” sizzles with confidence, sailing in a sea of wordless cooing and strangled electronics, filled with the joy of pure sensual emotion, building and building, like a cocoon before it bursts.

Man does contain a massive international hit single in the Youssou N’Dour duet “7 Seconds”, its steely cool impassiveness starkly contrasts against the warmth of their voices.

Cherry shows off the swagger in her step in the trip-rock of “Kootchi”: a laundry list of the mundane things she likes about her lover:

I love the way you walk,
I love the way you talk
With your mouthful
The way you park on the sidewalk
The way you are in the car
I’ll make you love the way I behave
On my bad days

Belting this while a meteor shower of distortion rains over a military backbeat, her ability to sound demanding and vulnerable simultaneously is uncanny. Her vocal command travels down to the quiet alien calm of” Carry Me” and up to the bouncy sandpapery beat of “Together Now”. All the makings of hit record in America.

THE FALLOUT: Alas, her American record company was going through a “restructuring” in 1996 and declined to release Man, ever. It was a minor hit in the rest of the world, lovingly out of step with current music trends. Outside of guesting on other artists’ singles, Neneh Cherry has yet to record a follow-up album in the nine years since its release.

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

A rare humanistic electronica album, Man is worthy of seeking out, even if you live in the USA.

NEXT WEEK: Chocolate Genius turns to God, kinda.

Divine Styler: Spiral Walls Containing Autumns of Light (1992)

divine_spiral

Are you ready for the love of Allah, ambience and acid?

Purchase this album: Amazon

THE SCENE: What was Ice-T’s Rhyme Syndicate smoking in 1992? Ice started singing with the hardcore punkish Body Count, Everlast turned into the Irish Cypress Hill with House of Pain, and Divine Styler fell into the abyss with the scary-ass freakshow of Spiral Walls Containing Autumns of Light.

Ever hear a song and think “This is just wrong. Songs aren’t supposed to go like that. Is something in my ear?” This is a whole album of those songs, each one more disturbing and psychically damaged than the last one.

Dropping the strict hip-hop of his previous album, 1989’s Word Power, Spiral delves into psychedelic speed metal, trip-hop, Elizabethan acoustic fingerpicking and jam-band blues rock while unveiling fiendishly intricate rhymes about his Muslim faith and psychedelic drugs. What he doesn’t do exactly is rap, although every other method of vocalizing is present and accounted for.

In “Am I An Epigram for Life” he asks himself muffled metaphysical questions while swirling down the drain of keyboard bloops. The bloops return in “Touch” where he whispers his beat poetry up against a melting CasioTone preset beat, which then decays into a funk march.

It’s unsettling to listen to “Love, Lies and Lifetime Cries” as it consists mostly of him pleading “They won’t let me in!” while he frantically knocks on a closed door. I wouldn’t open it either; he doesn’t sound like someone I’d want to let in the house. But his paranoid ranting over sickly oozing keyboards is highly intriguing.

“Grey Matter” was the radio single, as if wooden flute techno jazz was going to get him spot on “Yo! MTV Raps”. His eloquence is outstanding as it is avant-garde, as he goes way out onto the microledge with “Heaven Don’t Want Me And Hell’s Afraid I’ll Take Over. He pontificates, seduces and conjoles you with his oratory skills, one step from outright screaming. He saves that for “Mystic Sheep Drink Electric Tea” a buzzy slab of industrial grindcore.

Divine Styler kicks it super-old school, kinda, with the drums-and-space of “Euphoric Rangers” then stays in outer space with “Aura” where he raps over the sounds of a malfunctioning alien probe ship.

THE FALLOUT: Divine Styler impressively wrote, produced, arranged and played most of the instruments on Spiral, but his fearlessness caught hip-hop heads completely off-guard and it bombed. Divine Styler lost his production deal, his record label and eventually his freedom (if not also his tether to the material world).

Spiral is out of print but might be available from Amazon. You can also listen to tracks below:

Spiral Walls Containing Autumns of Light is unabashedly psychotic but worth the effort of a complete listen.

See you next Wednesday.

NEXT WEEK: What ever happened to Neneh Cherry?

Fishbone: The Reality Of My Surroundings (1991)

fishbone_reality

A band at its peak is a marvelous thing.

Purchase this album: Amazon

THE SCENE: In the 1980s Los Angeles fixtures Fishbone were one of the first ska-influenced bands to net a major-label deal, yet creative control was not a part of their contract. Producer David Kahne buffed and honed their more commercial songs to a pristine polish, which was a major shift from their ruggedly eccentric live material. After three years of negotiation they convinced their label that they could self-produce, resulting in 1991’s psychedelically stunning The Reality of My Surroundings.

Normally a seven-piece band, Fishbone strived for audio maximilism, cramming most songs with orchestra-level layers of Technicolor instrumentation and agressive melodicism. They sounded like a band suddenly freed from oppression, and the theme of surviving through hard times flavors every track.

“Fight The Youth” explodes with curlicues of metallic guitar set to “stun”. Instruments slash and thrust like an open pack of switchblades, daring you to approach them. This isn’t the sunny funny goofy group from 1988’s Truth And Soul. This Fishbone is politically aware and incredibly pissed off.

The inner-city fury of “So Many Millions” slams you like a newbie in a prison riot. Skittery drums anchor funky swells of sound, as if danger is rising up behind you. Gangs of vocals moan over insistent guitar solos and the song doesn’t stop as much as it passes out from all its expended energy.

The indentured servitude anthem “Housework” conjures up a mythical 1920s New Orleans juke joint, full of tinkly piano and muffled horns. Yet its continual beat changing — from old-jack swing to new-time waltz — keeps it in the now.

Control and the loss thereof haunt both the sadly melancholic “Those Days Are Gone” and the radioactive carnival ride of “Behavior Control Technician”:

Children runaway from the torturistic ways
Children still resist from the powers that persist
Will you shut up and sit still
I think you should obey
Having very few rights we cannot communicate

Train my brain to work the way you want me to
Don’t question authority see
Be a little zombie that agrees with you
You are strapped with a double standard cup
In a battle you won’t win
And when it’s over we’re gonna dance your memory away

Sheltering will restrict your baby’s mind

Over nothing but African drums, “Junkies Prayer” recites a different cracked-out poem in each ear while a gritty sample of a cheesy laugh track floats in and out of the mix. It’s both humorous and devastating, as is the entire album.

THE FALLOUT: The kinetic first single “Sunless Saturday” helped propel Reality to become Fishbone’s highest charting, largest selling and most critically beloved album. But all success is relative, and after fourteen years it has yet to reach gold status. One album later Fishbone was dropped by their label and lost half of their original members.

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

An artistic tour de force, The Reality of My Surroundings’ intense and well-crafted performances deserves a better fate than what it received.

See you next Wednesday.

NEXT WEEK: Sun Ra, the original Black departure artist, shows us the “Magic”.

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.

Prince and the Revolution: Parade (1986)

prince_parade

Sometimes synergy can really backfire.

Purchase this album: Amazon

THE SCENE: In 1984, after the worldwide success of the Purple Rain movie, album, tour and hand puppet, Prince undoubtedly felt that he could probably record “America the Beautiful” and create a hit record, which is exactly what he did on his follow-up Around the World in a Day. But releasing a new album during a high-profile tour was an easy way to sell a record. The next recording, Parade, needed to stand on its own musical merit.

Well, that’s what a sane musician would have thought.

Instead, Prince decided to attach HIS album to “Under the Cherry Moon”, an incoherently self-directed black and white romantic comedy about a pair of gigolos looking for love on the French Riviera. The stench of this vanity project was so large Warner Brothers refused to name the album after the movie, hoping to salvage some record sales and perhaps postpone Prince’s career suicide for a couple of years. Alas, he and the Revolution delivered an quirky album that sounded like a soundtrack to a French art film, except for one crucial track that saved the album from total obscurity, “Kiss”.

“Kiss” is a three-minute concentrate of his signature sonics: chicken-scratch guitar slashes over clipped drum machine patterns, his obsession with dating and mating and rating women, topped with orgasmic vocals and grounded by a bass line that sounds like a malfunctioning muffler. And “Kiss” sounds like nothing else on the album.

When I first heard the opening track “Christopher Tracy’s Parade” I thought my speakers were damaged, as the song begins with a orchestra so heavily reverbed it sounds as if they were performing in an airplane hangar. Once this flourishing salvo finishes you’re dropped into the minimalist steel drum workout of “New Position”, which moves quickly into the lush embryo of “I Wonder U” and then into a possibly stupefying confusion.

These songs shimmer and sparkle with cinematic life, and many feature unexpected instrumentation: flutes and timbales in the pre-jungle “Life Could Be So Nice”, accordion in the Parisian café come-on “Do U Lie?”, and whatever that electronic duck sound is at the beginning “Girls and Boys”, which gives the album a light, humorous vibe.

A sense of relaxed fun runs rampant throughout, which helps the Kurt Weill-styled lounge ballad “Under the Cherry Moon” seem grand rather than silly. The Revolution stepped up to the songwriting process and added dozens of spectacular textures and melodies, even contributing a rare instrumental “Venus De Milo”. It’s a peculiarly slow orchestral ether but damn it’s nice.

Although there were other singles released after “Kiss” none were exactly hits, although the sharply styled funk of “Anotherloverholenyohead” is one of his best songs. The blend of macho keyboard riffs and delicate chamber strings parallels lyrics about pleading a lover to return to you while daring her to go:

Now all of the sudden
U try 2 fight it
U say you’ve had enough
Even though we had big fun
u want another someone
Yo happily ever after be
Sure as there’s a sun,
I’m gonna be the 1 and if
u don’t understand face to face
Baby I’ll tell u down on my knee, yeah

U need another lover
like u need a hole in yo head (baby, baby)
U know there ain’t no other
that can do the duty in your bed

What makes Parade special is that all of its lush eccentricities work, rather than sounding like “Experiments We Made on our French Vacation”. The songwriting is incredibly focused and succeeds as a concept album even without the movie, something André 3000 realized when he rewrote the entire thing and called it The Love Below. Really. The out-of-sync orchestral opening, the concepts of finding and losing love, the late-‘80s drum programming, the over-the-top vocals layering…all admittedly nabbed from Parade and not executed nearly as well. But what was radical in 1986 was simply edgy in 2003, and OutKast sold 5 million copies of The Love Below. Prince, on the other hand, had a crap movie suck the life out his album like an angry newborn infant at dinnertime, thus Parade was his worst selling album in six years.

THE FALLOUT: Showing the type of employee love one would expect from Enron, Prince fired all but one of The Revolution and cut his next disc virtually alone, the career-defining and hot selling Sign ‘O’ The Times. (Then his career went into freefall for sixteen years, proving that karma will eventually catch up with everybody.)

Parade is available from Amazon and you can listen to tracks here:

It does take a couple of listens to “get it”, but the tingly feeling it creates stays for a long time.

See you next Wednesday.

NEXT WEEK: Herbie Hancock creates ambient music 20 years too early and it doesn’t go well AT ALL.