Epitaph

I realize that I mostly keep to the rock arena, but I'm compelled to write a brief note on Lena Horne, who passed away on May 9th. No one can pretend to enjoy so-called Easy Listening music without having heard her voice. And since I hadn't, in respect to her, I popped in Stormy Weather.

Quite simply, if you haven't yet heard that CD, go do so. Lena had a voice of liquid crystal, one which didn't just sing the right notes, but would catch thoses notes and make them earn their keep. Like Tony Bennett, she clearly had a great respect for her source material, and a verve for the telling; a spin for each individual song that made even the novelty numbers as powerful and dynamic as the torch ballads.

She was also in quite a few Hollywood musicals, and while I'm sure we can argue about the merits of those, one can't but admire her elegance and glamourous air. By the time she got to the Stormy Weather album in 1956, the squeaky-clean delivery from the fourties (such as in the orginal cut of Stormy Weather) was being supplanted by a brimstone flair, but the glamour never went away.

She was a class act, a dear and wonderful singer who had her Moment, had her success, and has left us a marvelous recorded legacy. Wherever she is now, God bless.

As to the album Stormy Weather, I don't actually have any clue how to review an album not of rock lineage. I'm inclined to say just go track it down and let it speak for itself. As with most records of that age, it's short. Only a half hour. And the lady never put a foot wrong. She saved the rather quaint lyrics of Tomorrow Mountain, gave all the fast songs jive (it's honestly just a fun CD to listen to) and the timbre of her voice made all the torchy moments hit home.

There was only one Lena Horne. Now I just wonder why it took me so long to get around to listening to her...

One of the new wave girls...

Return of the Giant Slits. Four and a half stars.

I'll begin by saying there is no guarantee (whatever your musical preference) that
you'll like this. The Slits stepped out of the punk arena and into new wave. But since that's almost as generic an umbrella term as "rock" it's not much help.

Put simply, this is just plain weird. It's quite daring and innovative for its time, highly experimental and decidedly uncommercial. It's been doomed to obscurity, of course.

Though the Slits have had numerous men in the band (notably Budgie, who went on to higher profile work in Siouxsie and the Banshees), they've always been considered a girl band and the focus has always been on Ari Upp, frontwoman and singer of amazing distinction. Throughout this, their second album, released in 1981, what stands out first is her fascinating, wandering voice, which interprets lyrics seemingly regardless of their meaning. She leaps up and down the scale, warbles and howls like a half-mad jungle native, ranging from playful to angry and back again, and slurring her words so much that it's hopeless to try and make sense of them.

The music almost equals Ari and her backup singers in the bizarre, since it trips along on afro-centric beats and rhythms.

I own the Japanese import of the CD and I don't know if that's the reason it opens with the closing song Earthbeat...in Japanese. You certainly couldn't find a less accessable way to open an album if you tried. Driven by tribal drums, any melody it may have possessed is knocked off center by the odd handling of Japanese. It also features Ari doing her best attempt at a bird call, adding to the generally exotic flavour.

Or What It is? takes up English. Its time signature is all crosseyed, forever halting just when it starts to go somewhere. The sheer amount of strange percussion, including rattles, and Ari in prima-donna overdrive, makes it a continuation of eccentricity; but the second half of the song takes up a gradual fade on a chorus that, coming from these ladies, is downright appealing.

Face Place kicks in with trombone, juxtaposing an almost sinister with the more light-hearted tempos of a carnival. Three piece harmonies practicing vocal acrobatics... it's like the Boswell Sisters channeling Yoko Ono, and it sounds as fresh as the day it was recorded.

Walk About is the most appealing song on the whole record, possessing a cool, funky riff and a fascinating vocal line. It wasn't a single, and would have gone nowhere if it had, but one can dream...

Difficult Fun takes up flute, the sort of synth one hears on a lot of eighties fantasy films and soaring vocals.

Animal Space/Spacier is one of the darker tracks. The lyrics are a little more comprehensible, but it's really Ari that makes these tracks what they are. This one has a good guitar solo on it. And the "spacier" part is the instrumental only section, which is chaotic, yet with a distinct method to the madness that keeps the beat up front and keeps the jamming from going too far off the mark.

Horns take up Improperly Dressed. The chorus shows off her higher register warbling nicely, though it's a bit too out-there and chaotic, from a melodic standpoint, for my taste.

Life on Earth is decidedly ominous. Ari goes into higher register, backed by a far from heavenly choir. They sound a bit tormented, forming a strange contradiction to the more playful main vocal. It dissolves at the end into what sounds like a tribal funeral lament, and all the instruments fall away.

Then it's the English version of Earthbeat. And it's just as odd as the Japanese. Driven by that same drumming, it's somewhat shorter.

It took me a few listens to really even begin to appreciate the various and sundry oddities Return of the Giant Slits has to offer. The Slits are not for everyone, and I wouldn't blame a person for being far less enthusiastic than me over this album. It was the last thing the band did, and far from an all-occasions CD. I've described it to the best of my ability. Now you'll just have to track it down yourself.