I have a bit of a love/hate relationship with AB. Well, hate is too strong a word. Call it ambivalence (blimey, that was a massive downgrade). Some of his back catalogue I love with a passion (The Lone Rhino, Twang Bar King, Op Zop Too Wah) and the rest is OK-ish. Just OK-ish…I really can take it or leave it. And that’s not for want of trying folks. I really do try and love those other records but there’s something about them that leaves me going…”Uh”.
Anyway, that was the past and this is the future and the future is “Side One” – the first part of a three-part work issued on separate CDs (thanks, Ade. Dontcha think I am poor enough already?). So anyway what’s it like?
Well I really loved his last “proper” studio release Op Zop Too Wah. I thought it was clever, fun, intelligent, stupid and brilliant in equal measures. I love the fact that one minute it was out-and-out song writing and the next it was little fragments of instrumental lunacy. So what for Side One?
It opens with the track “Ampersand” which features Les Claypool on bass and Danny Carey on drums (they also play on the following two tracks). I like it in a backward-looking “Elephant Talk” kinda way – it’s got the same kind of scratchy rhythm guitar over it and I love the bass playing on it a lot. It skitters and jumps – and is a very busy start to the album. “I See the Writing on the Wall” again jumps back to AB’s work on “The Lone Rhino” – it’s an basically an instrumental with a lolloping rhythm track and AB saying “I see the writing on the wall” throughtout. It’s OK. It’s a chance for the guitarist to show of his chops, I guess.
“Matchless Man” feels like “Her Love is Mine” from Op Zop, but that’s probably more to do with the use of tabla and the dream-like vocals. It’s OK – but AB does these tracks too easily. Skip to “Madness” which is another instrumental. With dual guitars slipping all over the place. It’s seedy and slimy and nasty. I like it.
“Walk Around the World” is another typical AB pop song – again it sounds like an off-cut from Op Zop. It has fast syncopated lead guitar – a bit like Discipline-era KC actually. It’s OK – it might take a few plays before I really like this one. It’s too familiar at the moment.
“Beat Box Guitar” – this is more like it.
“Under the Radar” opens with a very pleasant guitar chords that I think I can play. 😀 But then he starts singing and ruins it. It’s OK – with lots of blips and bloops occupying the audio spectrum. It’s a lesser piece and I get the feeling he’s doing this on auto-pilot.
“Elephants” execrable nonsense. Been there, done that, got the T-shirt. Rhino II – but at least Lone Rhinocerus was clever and fun. This states the bleedin’ obvious and I can’t stand that. I don’t need the destruction of a species spelt out to me AGAIN.
“Pause” – throwaway puff.
An overview of this album would be to say that it starts off strong and then fizzles out. The instrumentals are good, but the sung-songs are nowhere near as clever as his previous efforts. Dare I say it? If this is indeed a 3-CD set, then I think/hope that most of filler is on this first disc because it is going to be really hard to justify shelling out another $50 for the accompanying two volumes.
To sum-up: one for the die-hard fans.
