ewe2
26-02-2006, 04:17 AM
The government’s the devil’s hands
It’s a lie and it’s a scam
They wind us up, put us down, and watch us go
And if you close your eyes
There’s a big surprise
-- What The Fuck Are We Saying?
"Spot the influence" can be a fun game, but it can also be destructive, preventing the listener from hearing the music. It's a curse of many reviewers and musicians; reviewers because they're concerned with originality, musicians tend to subconsciously analyse songs into components. Mama Said should rightly be seen as a great album in the ongoing RnB/Soul/Funk tradition rather than a collection of an industry observer's biases, which is the overwhelming impression I get, for instance from the furious user reviews on amazon.com.
Kravitz made no secret of the unifying subject of the album: his divorce from Lisa Bonet. Throughout, he reappraises, questions, and mourns the relationship in all its phases; it's a very public picking at an emotional scar, something artists tend to do instead of actually talking. From this angle it's actually an effective companion for the emo, if your definition of emo includes those who've actually had a serious relationship. In some ways, you could call this the New York Jewish equivalent of a Woody Allen movie; Lenny fits the bill almost too well here.
Opening with the gentle hippiness of Fields Of Joy as it does, the ballsy Always On The Run is a bracing dip into groove. Stand By My Woman cleverly inverts the female torchsong genre, and the groove returns for the hopeful It Ain't Over Till It's Over, one of my all-time favourite toe-tappers. More Than Anything In This World slides in, a recurring motif that suggests his futile longing . Cool and matter-of-fact, What Goes Around Comes Around neatly encapsulates karma for the street, fading into the sonically immersive The Difference Is Why, lyrically brutal, but also touching:
You say you can’t trust me
Have you tried ?
You say you don’t love me
That’s a lie
There are so many so many rainbows
That we were to climb
But baby baby why can’t we survive ?
We zoom back to a relationships beginning in Stop Draggin' Around, a gorgeous piece of funky psychadelia, and to one of its principal results, Flowers for Zoë, a song for his daughter. The faintly creepy reprise of Fields Of Joy is an almost sarcastic rejoinder to the optimisim of the original. All I Ever Wanted continues the relationship analysis, but doesn't sound like he's convincing anyone, despite some great bluesy singing. When The Morning Turns To Night changes the subject for something a bit more apocalyptic, the end of the world. What The Fuck Are We Saying? continues somewhat in this vein, a plea for more humanity and less hypocrisy to a brisk funk groove. The very simple lovesong Butterfly closes the album.
Much of the so-called "influence" of Mama Said is an artifact of deliberate production by Kravitz, it's clear that he feels that some ideas are worth repeating, and the success of the album in terms of its influence has vindicated him, being an effective recap of late '60s/'70s studio techniques. His musical borrowings don't detract from the originality of his work; instead they enhance meaning. If the subject matter of All I Ever Wanted, had not been emotional pain, the Lennonesque touches would have been meaningless and rather crude; both studio production and songwriting are complementary here. The question should be asked: many love this album who don't have any knowledge of this background, should they be educated to dislike it for that reason? I think not.
Mama Said is a great album; there's a rockin' toe-tapping groove and lovely emotive ballads. More personal than didactic, it nevertheless is a summing-up of where Lenny came from and where he intends to go.
It’s a lie and it’s a scam
They wind us up, put us down, and watch us go
And if you close your eyes
There’s a big surprise
-- What The Fuck Are We Saying?
"Spot the influence" can be a fun game, but it can also be destructive, preventing the listener from hearing the music. It's a curse of many reviewers and musicians; reviewers because they're concerned with originality, musicians tend to subconsciously analyse songs into components. Mama Said should rightly be seen as a great album in the ongoing RnB/Soul/Funk tradition rather than a collection of an industry observer's biases, which is the overwhelming impression I get, for instance from the furious user reviews on amazon.com.
Kravitz made no secret of the unifying subject of the album: his divorce from Lisa Bonet. Throughout, he reappraises, questions, and mourns the relationship in all its phases; it's a very public picking at an emotional scar, something artists tend to do instead of actually talking. From this angle it's actually an effective companion for the emo, if your definition of emo includes those who've actually had a serious relationship. In some ways, you could call this the New York Jewish equivalent of a Woody Allen movie; Lenny fits the bill almost too well here.
Opening with the gentle hippiness of Fields Of Joy as it does, the ballsy Always On The Run is a bracing dip into groove. Stand By My Woman cleverly inverts the female torchsong genre, and the groove returns for the hopeful It Ain't Over Till It's Over, one of my all-time favourite toe-tappers. More Than Anything In This World slides in, a recurring motif that suggests his futile longing . Cool and matter-of-fact, What Goes Around Comes Around neatly encapsulates karma for the street, fading into the sonically immersive The Difference Is Why, lyrically brutal, but also touching:
You say you can’t trust me
Have you tried ?
You say you don’t love me
That’s a lie
There are so many so many rainbows
That we were to climb
But baby baby why can’t we survive ?
We zoom back to a relationships beginning in Stop Draggin' Around, a gorgeous piece of funky psychadelia, and to one of its principal results, Flowers for Zoë, a song for his daughter. The faintly creepy reprise of Fields Of Joy is an almost sarcastic rejoinder to the optimisim of the original. All I Ever Wanted continues the relationship analysis, but doesn't sound like he's convincing anyone, despite some great bluesy singing. When The Morning Turns To Night changes the subject for something a bit more apocalyptic, the end of the world. What The Fuck Are We Saying? continues somewhat in this vein, a plea for more humanity and less hypocrisy to a brisk funk groove. The very simple lovesong Butterfly closes the album.
Much of the so-called "influence" of Mama Said is an artifact of deliberate production by Kravitz, it's clear that he feels that some ideas are worth repeating, and the success of the album in terms of its influence has vindicated him, being an effective recap of late '60s/'70s studio techniques. His musical borrowings don't detract from the originality of his work; instead they enhance meaning. If the subject matter of All I Ever Wanted, had not been emotional pain, the Lennonesque touches would have been meaningless and rather crude; both studio production and songwriting are complementary here. The question should be asked: many love this album who don't have any knowledge of this background, should they be educated to dislike it for that reason? I think not.
Mama Said is a great album; there's a rockin' toe-tapping groove and lovely emotive ballads. More personal than didactic, it nevertheless is a summing-up of where Lenny came from and where he intends to go.