This digitally remastered assembly of the nine tracks of 1991's "Half Out" with four extra tracks constitutes a very impressive re-release from old chums LTM.
It is an hour of sumptuous stuff that asks more questions than it answers.
To start with, now that we all live in The Future and space ships have been on Titan and so on, can we cope with cultural and musical richness any better than we could in 1991? Is pop music doomed forever to overlook the creative giants of its own era? Or are the MIDGE URES, the ERASURES and the MARC ALMONDS the true masters, nailing the veneer of their era's gurus onto less substantial works?
Answers in an email please by Friday (any Friday).
For this listener, the euphoric moments from this collection are in instrumental works. COLE PORTER'S "In the Still of the Night" and Brown/Reininger's "Violorganni" leap out each time I set the CD running. COLE PORTER tunes don’t often remind me of BOB DYLAN'S "Rainy Day Women #12 & 35" but Brown punches that sleazy riff right into the intro and lets it roll with an accordion wheezing as if it was a Saint's Day in Lot et Garonne. Clarinet, sax and bleary trumpet make a glorious drunken parade with the trumpet mute going at it like an old man's hat on a priapic lap. Splendid. "Violorganni" could, for a moment of perky synth stabs, be a SPARKS out take. Then, bar five gets right into the ecstatic songbird violin playing that is Blaine L. Reininger (co-writer of this tune). It’s very simple, with small changes of short lyrical phrases. But it is a joy.
The spoken word pieces (notably opener "Decade") don’t stand up quite so well. Maybe it's me, but hip hop has done so much over the last ten years that fairly straight recitation over however cool jazz doesn’t work as well as it we know it should. Steven Brown's singing voice is maybe not his favourite instrument, but by contemporary standards he's more than adequately equipped and when he does break into melody on the likes of "San Francisco" or "Voodoo" things feel a lot more convincing. I wouldn't steer you away from "Decade" or "A Quoi ca Sert l'Amour" though – there are delights in their depths for sure.
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The sheer range of styles and strategies is a Steven Brown trademark. Without excursions into film soundtrack, torch song, jazz orchestra or New electro disco it just wouldn’t be Steven Brown. So you do have to listen carefully and not wander off into another room. If you do, by the time your attention gets back on the case you will be lost. Who are these operatic guys singing, and what for? Where did Humphrey Bogarde come from? Who let the drum programmer loose?
The first nine songs do indeed work as the single album they were created for. The retrospective feel, evoked by that "Decade" piece is elegantly and optimistically closed by the co-written chamber music of "Violorganni" (with its hint of Vivaldi warmth).
In the extras, "Boom Boom" is a straighter outing for the swing band that bloused its way through "In the Still of The Night" "Miles in Moskow" is more experimental mix of bebop, funk and ambience. "The Way" prefigures SQUAREPUSHER with its bass-driven swirls into some kind of trance space thing. "Love Yes (Ebony Mix)" could have been written for a Grace Jones/James Brown duet with its minimalist cool dance feel. These are all serious added value to the collection.
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