This, dear reader, marks my debut in ’s MattA75 annual “I’ll Show You Mine If you Show me Yours W/O”. I’ve been a spectator since year one, but this is my first year to “run with the bulls”, so to speak. You can get the specific details about this W/O on his web page, if you haven’t already been brought to speed about this great event from others who entered in a timely fashion. My pitiful excuses are to follow this review for the morbidly curious.
I joined this W/O without really thinking it through, so now I’m as nervous as a long-tailed cat in a room full of rocking chairs. Since the beginning, music has long been my comfort zone here at Eps, but that speaks loads more about music’s versatility than my own. When I fail to find something witty about a song’s sounds, melodies or beats, I can pad out the review with reminisces about times past or how dated the video now looks. And if all else fails, put in a paragraph or two about the band’s history, behind the music style.
With Sweetback, I have no such safety net. All I can tell you about the band’s history is they back up Sade (which until this w/o I never even considered Sade having a regular backing band.) I can tell you this CD has received lots of high praise from others, and that they have released a long awaited follow-up known as Sweetback 2. I’ve barely skimmed through the songs, so my virgin ears will be taking in Sweetback for the first time as I write this.
“Gaze” opens with some nice steady percussion, rising & swelling keyboards, and breathy vocals by Groove Theory’s Amel Larrieux. This song is so sexy; it’ll practically have you humping air. The percussion stays steady, but keyboards, vocals and baritone sax float in and out, like waves rushing and retreating to shore.
“Softly, Softly” picks up the pace just a hair, with Maxwell taking over on vocals. I’m bothered by these vocals, because I’m not the kind of guy who finds a guy singing falsetto sensual. I especially like the latter section, which builds to a slow-burning jam, before quieting down again. We’re barely through track two and I’m already ready for a smoke.
“Sensations” sounds like my favorite soft interludes from “Emmanuelle” movies, with more of that steady rolling percussion interplaying perfectly with bass. Towards the middle, a guy speaks in easy tones as if he was trying to hypnotize us, but my favorite parts are when the saxophone weaves its way into the groove.
“Au Natural” has a percussion intro that reminds me a bit of Toto’s “Africa”. Bahamadia raps through the song, and she reminds me a lot of Eartha Kitt as cat woman if she were to cover REM’s “It’s the End of The World as We Know It (And I Feel Fine)”. It seems out of place with the slow jazz fusion happening in the background. What’s impressed me most about this cd is the soft, sensual mood it creates, but this song breaks interrupts the flow. Note to self: be sure to program this track out when you play this for a “lady friend”. Or better yet, burn a copy of the CD and replace this track with something by Sade.
“Arabesque” has a floating Arabic groove in the background, but it’s the searing guitar lines and throbbing keyboard that takes center stage. It has a cool, spacey vibe I’m really digging. There are so many different little background noises you’ll catch something different each time you listen to it.
“You Will Rise” starts with the sax sound we all know and love. Amel takes on vocals and the song transforms from sultry jazz into straight-up sexy R & B. I love the answer and call of Amel with the soft background singers. Hell, I even dig the keyboard solo, especially as Amel ad-libs vocals over the top. Please forgive me if my words have been sparse thus far, but this is the kind of cd that makes you just want to close your eyes, nod your head and take it all in. We’re only halfway through and I already know this one’s a keeper.
“Chord” kicks off with a sultry sax, before segueing into cool percussion. If this were playing in a movie, it’d be a scene with two people caressing each other to soft filtered lighting, or we’d be exploring an underwater city. Or two people caressing each other to soft lighting in an underwater city, but how many movies have you seen people do that?
“Walk of Ju” sounds like a guitar softly being plucked with a lazy sax melody, for the first 1:30, then shifts to a little harder groove with the percussion. It’s got a slow mid-tempo feel just like “Chord” had, but the drum sounds take center stage a lot more. As the jazzy sax fades out, we get soft piano tinkling so popular in New Age type music. I liked this song before I started having flashbacks of working at “Natural Wonders” in the mall years back. Usually just Yanni or Enya sets those memories off, painful ones of time crawling at glacial speeds for a wage barely above minimum. (Of course, I spent most of my “working” hours there either tossing balsa wood gliders or doing tricks on a cheaply made but not cheaply priced Amazon rainforest Yo-Yo. Looking back now, I guess I was lucky to be paid at all.) I’ll just walk on by Ju and hope I like the next song better.
“Hope She’ll be Happier” takes a break from the instrumental tracks in favor of soft vocals. The beat is relatively the same as the previous three songs, but the feel is more like soft 70’s AM radio. It seems a little upbeat to be a song about a woman leaving, in the same way the Honeydrippers sounded a little too happy to truly have the “Young Boy Blues”. And like that Honeydrippers song of old, the vocal harmonies win me over anyways. I’ve liked almost every song so far on Sweetback, but this is the song I’ll return to most often and work onto future mix cd’s.
Maybe I’ve been playing Sid Meier’s “Civilization III” a little too much on my PC these days, but I swear “Some Dubbing” would feel right at home in that game. Ol’ Sid should contact Sweetback to sexy up “Civ IV” should he decide to make such a game. AT least the first half of the song sounds that way, before giving way to more of that sweet minimal percussion mixing with keyboards and other assorted “futuristic” sounds. The highlight of the song for me were the “Crowd” sounds of people talking for a moment, like Pink Floyd loved to use or Aerosmith did on “Movie” from Permanent Vacation”. This song works great as background music, but more of those weird sounds would have made the song a lot more interesting to this active listener.
“Cloud People”’s title has me imagining guards in funny blue hats and flashbacks of a smiling Lando Calrissian smiling before turning Judas on Han Solo. But these cloud people are a lot more understated than any John Williams score. I don’t care for the Kenny G sounding Sax, but luckily that gives way to some soft tribal-esque rhythym halfway into the tune. Oops! Spoke too soon, they came back. This makes me want to lay next to a beautiful woman at night on a small sailboat and stare up at the stars. One of those calm, cloudless nights where a giant yellow moon casts out jagged streaks across ripples of black water.
“Powder” sneaks in with a slow heartbeat of a rhythm, and more of that sax/keyboard/piano weave Sweetback seems to be so adept at. This song has a very calming quality to it I really enjoy. I could easily fall into that dreamy state between sleep and awake listening to this song.
I want to thank Carletta ( http://www.epinions.com/user-cletta1201 ) for choosing this CD for me, as it’s not something I think I would have discovered on my own. Dissecting this CD track by track doesn’t really do it justice, as most of the tracks seamlessly segue into one another. Some music just sounds better at different times of the day, and this definitely qualifies as great after dark music. And I don’t mean just as the soundtrack to seduction, it’d also fit the bill for road trip music when it seems only you, truck drivers and convenience store workers are up. Check it out.
Okay, the real reason I was so late, is because I didn’t want to enter the W/O without my W/O partner . . . you believe me don’t ya’? Good, ‘cuz you shouldn’t.
I can’t say I didn’t have plenty of notice. I quickly received my “assignment” and Sweetback was a cd I was most definitely curious about. I had a whole 4-6 weeks to find the cd and write about it, how hard could that be?
My local used CD/Video/ Book store is the best in the Southeast, maybe even the world! I’ll stand by the Southeast claim, as not only I but my best friend Brian also stand by that claim, and in the past few years are tastes have been pretty divergent. Nt only will you find what you’ve looking for at McKay’s, but you’ll oftentimes get it at a ridiculously low price. It might have been scratched and more than my neighbor’s primer colored 㥑 Nova, but the price will be right. Patience and persistence is rewarded at McKay’s.
Apparently no one in this town is giving up their Sweetback, ‘cuz even in subsequent trips I have yet to find it there. None of the retail outlets carry it here either. Believe me, I checked. So I had to abandon my prefered old-fashioned method of purchasing music (over the counter) in favor of the internet. I had problems with Half.com shipping out a DVD to me over Christmas (this town doesn’t have Rick Springfield’s cinematic classic “Hard to Hold” either), but they delivered in a timely fashion this time. Had I not been such a slave to my music buying ways, I’d have been on time. Apologies to Matt, I’ll be on time next year if you’ll have my slacker self back
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