Columbia, apparently attempting to cash in on Pink Floyd's explosion in popularity, released this album in 1981 under Nick Mason's name when in reality he's simply the drummer in this incarnation of Carla Bley's ensemble; Ms. Bley composed all the music and lyrics for this project. It's possibly her most overtly pop-oriented album, with all eight songs featuring vocals by Soft Machine alumnus Robert Wyatt. The music, by Bley's standards, is fairly pedestrian if occasionally catchy, though the lyrics are often wryly amusing. So we have songs about failed car motors and a skeptic's encounter with a flying saucer, and one dedicated to unappreciative audiences titled "Boo to You Too." Though the band is staffed with several fine jazz musicians, the music has more of a rock or jazz-rock feel, largely due to the spotlight on guitarist Chris Spedding, who evidences slick, if relatively uninteresting, chops. To the extent the songs succeed, Wyatt can take much of the credit. His engagingly hoarse voice is capable of both wrenching sincerity and mordant humor; pieces like "Do Ya?," where he is asked to tortuously squawk the line "God knows I try!," would collapse entirely with a less convincing vocalist. The closing cut, "I'm a Mineralist," is the one that leaves a lasting impression. Conflating geology and minimalism, it includes lines like "Erik Satie gets my rocks off/Cage is a dream/Philip Glass is mineralist to the extreme," before launching into a note-perfect rendition of some pointedly bland Glassian measures. For Pink Floyd completists, this album might provide a glimpse into an alternate universe of which they were otherwise unaware, but fans of Bley's earlier masterpieces like Escalator Over the Hill are likely to emerge somewhat disappointed. AMG.
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Where have you gone, Terence Trent d'Arby? It's a question that must have entered the minds of even casual Terence Trent d'Arby fans during his six-plus-year absence from the spotlight following TTD's Vibrator. In fact, it was an extraordinarily eventful period for the artist, during which, among other things, he fought for and finally won his freedom from Sony, set up shop in Italy, experienced a profound personal and spiritual rebirth, altered his name accordingly, signed a deal with producer Glen Ballard's small Java imprint, spent much of 1998 recording three albums' worth of songs, had a creative falling out and parted ways with Ballard, started his own record label, spent several years putting the finishing touches on and whittling down a set of songs for a comeback tentatively titled The Solar Return of TTD, then finally re-emerged with the 19-track Terence Trent d'Arby's Wildcard! Those with the patience to stick by d'Arby were rewarded with this incomparably rich masterpiece, arguably his finest recording yet, and inarguably as bold, ambitious, and uncategorizable a return as anyone could have hoped for or imagined. Let's call it Introducing the Hardline According to Sananda Maitreya. A record this adventurous rarely makes it through the red tape, so it is fitting that Wildcard! found its own way to the public. Fitting also that it introduces itself by way of the ebullient brass blowout "O Divina," quaint clawhammer banjo giving way to swooping, Chicago-esque horn charts and a gutsy, gymnastic tenor as sweet as Sam Cooke's was smooth. The song may be something of a throwback, but the rest of the album is decidedly forward-looking, whether reinventing R&B for the 21st century (the gauzy "Girl," mellow "Some Birds Blue," and the roboto-funk of "SRR-636*" and "My Dark Places," the latter like a futuristic Earth, Wind & Fire fronted by Al Green), staying a few loops ahead of the electronica curve (the Dallas Austin-produced "Drivin' Me Crazy" and "Ev'rythang," which can only be labeled -- if it must -- trip-hop), or extending the sensual jazz fusion of Vibrator's "Undeniably" on "Shalom." That still leaves copious room for honeyed pop like "Sweetness" (with a guest spot by Wendy Melvoin) and "Sayin' About You" and the creamy rock of "And They Will Never Know" and "Goodbye Diane." All that and the newly metamorphosed Maitreya gives a remarkably sublime vocal performance throughout. Wildcard! is soul music with a capital S and in the broadest, most stirring, and visionary sense. AMG.
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A collaboration between an avant-garde modern classical composer and a traditional Indian/Hindi composer/performer seems as unlikely as ice hockey on the River Styx. However, Passages is a collaboration between Philip Glass and Ravi Shankar and it works quite well. Shankar's smooth style fits nicely with Glass' dissonant orchestrations. There is a great deal of technical data involved here. Both of these artists have long taken intellectual approaches to music. Thus, the liner notes are a bit heavy-handed. The music is brilliant. The symphony dominates the soundscapes, but Shankar's atmospheres are integral to the success of this project. This CD will appeal to fans of John Cage, Terry Riley, and Steve Reich. AMG.
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With Dirty Mind, Prince had established a wild fusion of funk, rock, new wave, and soul that signaled he was an original, maverick talent, but it failed to win him a large audience. After delivering the sound-alike album, Controversy, Prince revamped his sound and delivered the double album 1999. Where his earlier albums had been a fusion of organic and electronic sounds, 1999 was constructed almost entirely on synthesizers by Prince himself. Naturally, the effect was slightly more mechanical and robotic than his previous work and strongly recalled the electro-funk experiments of several underground funk and hip-hop artists at the time. Prince had also constructed an album dominated by computer funk, but he didn't simply rely on the extended instrumental grooves to carry the album -- he didn't have to when his songwriting was improving by leaps and bounds. The first side of the record contained all of the hit singles, and, unsurprisingly, they were the ones that contained the least amount of electronics. "1999" parties to the apocalypse with a P-Funk groove much tighter than anything George Clinton ever did, "Little Red Corvette" is pure pop, and "Delirious" takes rockabilly riffs into the computer age. After that opening salvo, all the rules go out the window -- "Let's Pretend We're Married" is a salacious extended lust letter, "Free" is an elegiac anthem, "All the Critics Love U in New York" is a vicious attack at hipsters, and "Lady Cab Driver," with its notorious bridge, is the culmination of all of his sexual fantasies. Sure, Prince stretches out a bit too much over the course of 1999, but the result is a stunning display of raw talent, not wallowing indulgence. AMG.
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The rough-and-ready sound of Charlie Parr's banjo and guitar work is exactly the kind of aesthetic that's not meant to age -- or rather, is meant to make a sound appear somehow timeless however much it's captured on an optical disc read by lasers. Larger philosophical points aside, When the Devil Goes Blind finds Parr further honing his self-consciously traditional aesthetic, something that's not about radical reinvention, whether it's his half-holler, half-family circle singing or the general look of the release via such elements as the sepia-tinted cover photo, but which in its lyrics is clearly about radicalism of a classic American kind. Parr is obviously dedicated to his craft and it's often about the individual moment of skill and flair in the structure he works in -- the sudden up-and-down parts on "Where You Gonna Be (When the Good Lord Calls You)," the descending breaks between verses on "Up Country Blues," the slow introduction to "I Was Lost Last Night." He also knows that an album can work best with variety in the sequencing -- after a series of quick performances he takes the slower, more contemplative route on "For the Drunkard's Mother," which in its own way also feels like a sudden modernizing of the overall album, like a quiet moment from Pearl Jam circa 1998. (And while it's a bit much to say that Parr has developed an Eddie Vedder-esque yarl, there's a sudden shock at times on songs like "Mastodon" when you realize how close it can be.) Similarly, "1890" feels much more 2010, Parr's switch to a speak-singing and the gentle tones of the guitar achieving a calm delicacy even as he sings a harrowing lyric about Native American slaughter in the Old West. AMG.
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Jordan: The Comeback is Prefab Sprout's largely successful attempt to embrace the breadth of popular music; wisely reuniting with producer Thomas Dolby, Paddy McAloon freely indulges his myriad ambitions and obsessions to weave a dense, finely textured tapestry closer in spirit and construction to a lavish Broadway musical than to the conventional rock concept LP. Over the course of no less than 19 tracks, McAloon chases his twin preoccupations of religion and celebrity, creating a loose thematic canvas perfect for his expanding musical palette; quickly dispensing with common pop idioms, the album moves from tracks like the samba-styled "Carnival 2000" to the self-explanatory "Jesse James Symphony" and its companion piece "Jesse James Bolero" with remarkable dexterity. Dolby's atmospheric production lends an even greater visual dimension to the songs, which -- with their tightly constructed narratives and occasional spoken-word passages -- seem almost destined to someday reach the stage; indeed, Jordan: The Comeback is like an original cast recording minus the actors, or a rock opera without the silliness and bombast -- a truly inspired work. AMG.
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