Search - Club Nouveau :: New Beginning

Here We Go New Jack Swinging ........Yet Again,Now With Club

Andre S. Grindle | Brewer Maine | 04/21/2007

(1 out of 5 stars)

"Yes this is THE same Club Nouveau that did the exellent album Life, Love & Pain and it's great hit "Lean On Me".What happened?The band records a few great albums and then what?The lose members,and are forced to add new ones.The result is the same thing that happened to Cameo on Sexy Sweet Thing,The Gap Band on Y2K: Funkin' Till 2000 Comz,The Dazz Band on Under the Streetlights,Midnight Star on Work It Out,Kashif on Kashif [1989],Slave and sadly to the earlier generation like The Bar Kays,Donna Summer,Ray Parker and (yes) EVEN GEORGE CLINTON AND JB,THE GODFATHER HIMSELF on the Universal James album during the years 1989 to as far up as 1999.Each of them elected to update their sound,all to make albums that were really cheap imitations of Teddy Riley's new jack swing sound he popularized for Guy and Bobby Brown;the result always sounds like they forgot to turn the "shuffle beat" setting off on the drum machine.And 'A New Beginning',a typical old artist-turned-new jack title if I ever heard one is the exact same story.Song after SONG on this CD does a sad injustice to everything Club Nouveau represented musically.The saddest of all is the cover of "Oh Happy Day",the Edwin Hawkins Singers gospel classic;redone to sound like muzak from the Arsenio Hall Show.Out of all these songs eight of them fit right into that same catagory so if you don't like it you'll just have to do a lot of skipping ahead because "I Like Your Way",the tortured "The Pain" and the beautiful "Walk With Me" are yes,overproduced but pretty good songs;would be even greater if they were remade in a more organic way.Now I had no problem with electronics in music but that isn't why this and all the other artist's albums I mentioned before are now a mass of cutout CD's in record stores $1 and $2 dollar CD bins so be careful;if you see an album recorded by a soul,funk or dance act from 1989 to 1993 PROCEED WITH CAUTION!Forget disco sucks,just forget it.THIS is the music that truely sucked the funk and soul out of music and forced EVERYONE to comply and worst off-MUSICIANS OF ANY KIND NOT INVITED!!!And from what I hear the world of black radio in particular is still recovering from it all."