Required Listening 2004#2:The Wickedly Witty Witch of Teen-Soul to Joss Stone's Snow White.
Written: Feb 11 '04 (Updated Apr 27 '07)
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Pros: Bursts with personality, vivacity, humour, pathos, character and soul.
Cons: Alicia’s-Diary, Beyonce’s-Dangerously, Joss’s-Sessions and even Lauryn’s-Miseducation just don’t sound as good after this.
The Bottom Line: Sonically-opulent, emotionally-absorbing& laugh-out-loud-funny, 'Frank' is one of the best soul/jazz albums in years.Winehouse is a genius, a goddess& a landmine of conflicting emotions &traits. This'll keep you occupied for ages.
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| kookytree's Full Review: Frank - Amy Winehouse Movies |
One of the most unexpected musical trends of the Noughties thus far is that British artists seem to be making the best and most exciting soul music. Perhaps it’s because the geographical separation from the American market means British soul acts feel freer to experiment. Maybe it’s that innate British penchant for sarcasm and inability to take things all that seriously- meaning they are less susceptible to that all-too-common soul pitfall: triteness. Whatever it is, it’s undeniable- whilst the Yanks (Alicia, Angie, Vivian and even Erykah) seem to limit themselves by stubbornly ignoring the realities of modern music, slavishly emulating the past with wistful melodies in their mouths and halcyon daydreams in their heads, Brits like Lina (whose underselling, critically-acclaimed debut this is very much akin to), Floetry, Terri Walker and now Amy Winehouse all look even further back than '70s soul to 1930s jazz, whilst also accepting the future by incorporating hip-hop and rnb influences into their music. The result is a totally unique and very appealing sound, but what really sells it is the affable humour that seems to be part and parcel of British soul.
This is certainly true of nineteen-year-old Londoner and Badu support act Amy Winehouse- even more so than the others, jokes, putdowns and even punch-lines are just as important to her musical identity as her classic-jazz fixation and flexible vocalisms. This girl is mean, one of those fashion house assistants who makes you feel inferior simply by eyeing you with an impeccably groomed glance. However, she clearly knows it, and so we get a cruel, blank taunting of a New-Man-beau in ‘Stronger Than Me’ (‘Are you gay?…Feel like a lady and you my ladyboy’), a hilariously b!tchy dismissal of ‘those-sort-of-girls’ on the bluntly titled ‘F!ck Me Pumps’ (‘Wit’ya big empty purse, every week it gets worse, at least your breasts cost more than hers’), and even a deceptively soft love song in which Amy defends infidelity because the one-night-stand resembled her boyfriend (‘He looked like you…you wouldn’t want me to be lonely’). You get the feeling she’d be an absolute nightmare in real life, but it makes for amusing listening, and it’s endlessly more interesting than the usual I-wuv-you/I-hate-you soul auto-piloting. And indeed, it makes the quieter, more sincere moments of the album all that more convincing, surrounded as they are in such sharp, caustic surroundings (there hasn’t been a more accurate album title since Aguilera’s –ew- ‘Stripped’).
I’ll admit, I am head over heels in love with ‘Frank’, which luxuriates in gorgeous jazz production blended expertly with spicy hip-hop beats, topped by an INCREDIBLE Billie Holiday meets Nelly Furtado voice. There aren’t enough adjectives in the world to adequately express how wonderfulincrediblephenomenalsuperbsublimeinxoticating this album is. Some tracks take time to grow on you, some could have been structured more inventively or stretched out a little more (all too many finish before the three-minute-mark), but it’s the most compelling soul album I’ve heard since ‘Who Is Jill Scott?’.
Perhaps the greatest indication of Amy’s prodigious talent is the comparisons she’s been drawing- everyone from Billie Holiday to Ella Fitzgerald to Lauryn Hill to Chrissie Hynde to Lina to Alanis Morrisette have been namedropped, and all are fitting in one way or another. Amy is a self-confessed jazz junkie, and on some tracks (‘You Sent Me Flying; ‘I Heard Love Is Blind’ and particularly ‘Moody’s Mood For Love’) she sounds disarmingly similar to the greats. ‘Help Yourself’ is scarily similar to a Nelly Furtado song, if Nelly had a fetish for droll, swaying, WWII brass samples. Equally, her brutal lyricism is immediately reminiscent of a Jagged Little Alanis, whilst the fact that you feel you know Amy better than she knows herself once the CD has finished reminds me of ‘Miseducation’. The listener unwraps Amy’s true identity track-by-track, each song providing a different piece of the absorbing puzzle that is her personality. She pulses with contradictions, and is never less than unflinching in her honesty and introspection- this combination forms an endlessly compulsive listen, so engrossing, so difficult to lose interest in. B!tchy, lusty, candid, loutish, dramatic...it's a beautiful thing to discover and rediscover someone so much over the course of one record.
Musically, the production is actually rather plain to begin with. Lead single ‘Stronger Than Me’ is just your bog-standard soft-jazz Norah Jones-isms, if slightly spikier- the parping trumpets more on-edge, the guitar icier, even the generic beat somewhat agitated. It’s probably transference from the lyrics- this is a sonic kick in the balls to every moisturising, emotional Metrosexual told by magazines sensitivity is what women want in their men nowadays. Not Amy. Not even a little bit.
‘Don’t you know you supposed to be the man? Not pale into comparison to who you think I am/
You always wanna talk it through- I don’t care. I always have to comfort you when I’m there. But that’s what I need you to do- stroke my hair./
Cuz I’ve forgotten all of young love’s joy. Feel like a lady and you my ladyboy/
You should be stronger than me’
The song encapsulates what makes Amy work- her voice and her production is pure vintage, almost chill-out. But she’s a coarse city girl brimming over with harsh opinions- even her voice has a rough-round-the-edges vitality to it, and anyone who buys this expecting to be able to relax is in for a shock. The production (with the exception of the Salaam Remi produced, Nas sampling ‘In My Bed’) is silkily mellow, but that voice will never be one you can just relax to. It, like the lyrics, keeps the listener constantly listening, a welcome rarity in this Norah Jones, Joss Stone saturated world.
‘You Sent Me Flying’ starts off a little like ‘I Will Survive’- enigmatic lyrics, sparse piano, strong, promising melody. However, instead of evolving into disco pomp, it settles for the one-two punch of an utterly standard hip-hop beat. Such simplicity means the track doesn’t stand out and shout it’s genius at you like, say, ‘In My Bed’, but the melody quietly demonstrates Amy’s concise, clear understanding of soul mechanics. Similarly, ‘Know You Now’ is a chirpy, muted exercise in jazz, and ‘F!ck Me Pumps’ twinkles by on a placid xylophone bing-bong backing. However, neither feel fully completed or satisfactory, more like demos with a staid, repetitive melody and choruses so feeble you strain to hear amongst wall-to-wall verses. Second single ‘In The Box’ is equally rather uninteresting on paper- gooey ‘ooooohs’ and ‘aaaahs’ for backing vocals, composed piano, waily lead singer and reflective, poignant lyrics. Before you yawn your way to a ‘Very Helpful’, I should point out that the melody positively SURGES with momentum, and, for such a b!tch, Amy’s voice rips the words apart with regret, hatred and love in equal measure. The words themselves ain’t too shabby either, making this my favourite break-up song since Lauryn Hill’s ‘Ex Factor’.
‘I came home this evening, and nothing felt like how it should be/
I feel like writing you a letter, but that’s not me, you know me/
Feel so f!cking angry, don’t wanna be reminded of you/
But when I put my sh!t in your kitchen, I said goodbye to your bedroom, it smelled o’you/
Mr False Pretence, you don’t make sense, I just don’t know you/
But you make me cry, where’s my kiss goodbye…I think I love you’
Whilst ‘I Heard Love Is Blind’ and ‘Moody’s Mood For Love’ are disarmingly short- suggesting similar problems with lack of fleshing out- both WORK in shrieking capital letters. ‘Moody’s Mood For Love’ is reggae-jazz- a combo that surely warrants it as must-listen anyway- but the fact that Amy showcases her voice spectacularly seals the deal. She may be a teen, but her voice suggests a hardened, struggling gangster’s moll, used to flogging her talent at unappreciative bars cloaked in thick smoke, her genius reduced to glorified cabaret act. It’s a New Orleans night embodied in voice, scratchy but oddly untainted, loaded with single entendre and dripping star quality like a candle drips wax.
‘Cherry’ is a clever little track, apparently recounting lesbian lust, but with a punchline that throws the whole thing off-track and makes you re-evaluate her previous words. Honestly, though, it’s works only because of Amy’s lyrical game- concise, thrusting, and endlessly witty, she’d make a great battle MC. Antithetical to such dynamics is ‘There Is No Greater Love’- the lyrics could have been penned by monkeys given the words ‘soul’ ‘love’ ‘true’ ‘no’ and ‘greater’ and ‘feel’ on cards to randomly assemble, but the soft-focus orchestration feels electrifyingly like the soundtrack to a soft-porn French art-flick from the 1970s, and that voice glimmers like a lazy evening sun on a calmed lake. Listening to it feels like an orgasm, right down to the heartbeat racing beneath the sax.
Salaam Remi (the man behind ‘Illmatic’ and The Fugees’ ‘The Score) is all over this album like a dubious rash- producing four tracks (‘F!ck Me Pumps’, ‘In My Bed’, ‘Take The Box’ and the bonus), arranging others, simply playing instruments on more still. His best work by far, though, is on the exhilarating ‘In My Bed’. Nas’s ‘Made You Look’ beat is twisted around aromatic, piping flutes and fluctuating saxophones, whilst Amy is typically insouciant, dismissing a hopeful ex with a series of sneering putdowns. ‘Oh. It’s you again. Listen, this isn’t a reunion. So excuse me if I turn my head.’ I hate this girl.
I love this girl. What’s so tragic about the deeply vulnerable interior beneath that disdainful veneer is her tragedies are totally self-inflicted. On the brooding ‘What Is It About Men’, she trawls through failed relationship and using man after failed relationship and using man- yet less than ten minutes later she licks her lips and pulls up her skirt on the bawdy, vaudeville concoction ‘Amy Amy Amy’, shaking her head at her uncontrollable nymphomania whilst checking out the contours of a passing young man’s Diesel Jeans, raising her eyebrows as she bends down to ease out her tights for just that bit too long. It’s Amy as Jessica Rabbit, and it’s a role she fills out with alarming ease.
‘My weakness for the other sex, every time his shoulders flex, the way the shirt hangs off his back, my train of thought spins right off track.’
Oh Amy, Amy, Amy. That’s the odd think about ol’ Winehouse- by the end she’s been consistently rude, insulting and superior, yet you end up feeling somehow protective of her. Those flashes of weakness, of thoughtfulness, suck you in like a poor boyfriend who doesn’t realise he’s being conned. ‘Not gonna meet your mother any time…I just wanna rip your body over mine’ she boasts on ‘Stronger Than Me’. Not REALLY, Amy. Really, you are a beautiful, deep, sensuous creature, and I will change you.
Amy doesn’t look like your typical soul/jazz queen. A long, proud, very Jewish face not without it’s own beauty, a cutting Cockney speaking voice, and expertly applied smudges of make-up means she comes across as your typical Camden rude-girl. Not only that, she is, as the album cover attests, very Caucasian. What’s interesting about her race is that no-one seems to be talking about it. White artists working within black-dominated genres are always controversial- Eminem is constantly thrown accusations of exploitation and imitation, Joss Stone suffers from the widespread disbelief that a British blonde can belt out Motown without so much as a blink, and hot, underground UK-garage femcee Lady Sovereign is frequently derided for her adoption of hardcore-ragga due to her white, teen exterior. With Amy though, people discuss the smoky voice, the precise lyricism, the rich production values, the Brit nominations (for Best Female and Urban), the b!tchiness, the dissing of Dido (words to the effect of ‘She only has one song and is boring’)….her race is barely on the radar of conversation. Joss Stone merely has a voice beyond her years- Amy has the equivalent soul. Her race seems to be irrelevant, a moot point. Nothing is more telling of the quality of her music than that.
Track Listings & Ratings
Intro- N/A
Stronger Than Me (5/5)
You Sent Me Flying (5/5)
Cherry Interlude- N/A
Know You Now (4/5)
F!ck Me Pumps (4/5)
I Heard Love Is Blind (5/5)
Moody's Mood For Love (5/5)
Teo Licks Interlude (N/A)
(There Is) No Greater Love (5/5)
In My Bed (5/5)
Take The Box (5/5)
October Song (4/5)
What It Is About Men (4/5)
Help Yourself (5/5)
Amy Amy Amy (5/5)
Bonus Track 1 ('Brother'?)- (3.5/5)
Mr Magic (Bonus Track 2)(5/5)
Related reviews:
The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill
Katie Melua- Call Off The Search
Terri Walker- Untitled
Siobhan Donaghy- Revolution In Me
The Diary Of Alicia Keys
Beyonce- Dangerously In Love
Floetry- Floetic
Recommended:
Yes
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kookytree
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mais lindo que michael jackson!
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