Search - Concrete Blonde :: Mojave

Remember when Johnette used to sing songs? I miss those days

Paul O'Brian | Westminster, CO United States | 01/10/2005

(2 out of 5 stars)

"I know that "I've been a fan of [artist name here] since the beginning, but..." is the Amazon reviews version of "I never used to believe these letters were real, until..." With me and Concrete Blonde, though, it's true. I've loved the band ever since "Dance Along The Edge" was getting regular play on MTV. The band I love combined gorgeous dark melodies with an uncompromising lyrical attack to create such fantastic songs as "Your Haunted Head", "Caroline", "Roxy", "God Is A Bullet", "Jenny I Read", "Happy Birthday", "Someday?", "Bloodletting (The Vampire Song)", "Heal It Up", "Free", "Lullaby"... I could go on and on.



Unfortunately, such songcraft is in short supply on the disappointing new album MOJAVE. What we get instead is mostly lead singer Johnette Napolitano declaiming poetry in a low monotone a la Jim Morrison, leavened with the occasional sung chorus. A little of this kind of thing goes a long way, and MOJAVE has a whole lot of it. Some of the poetry is good, although some of it is wincingly bad, such as the image of a "healthy young male coyote" who is environmentalist enough to snarl in disgust at the litter dropped by a passing motorist, or the line "Well ya know he took it badly when his kitty died," complete with "Awwwwwww!" in the background. Sometimes it's not even poetry at all: "Hey Coyote" has Johnette reading what sounds like an encyclopedia entry in a gratingly sanctimonious tone. One of the few tracks that's musical enough to be called a tune and is actually sung all the way through is "Ghost Riders In The Sky" -- a cover, tellingly enough, of the old Stan Jones song. The minor-laden melody and spooky imagery fit Concrete Blonde perfectly, and the song is a highlight of the album, though it would be much better if it weren't slowed to the point of somnolence.



I'm not somebody who rejects an artist for taking a new direction or recharging the creative batteries. In fact, sometimes those departures can be some of the best work of the artist's career, like Fleetwood Mac's TUSK or Bruce Springsteen's NEBRASKA. The problem with this particular departure is that it just yields a very dull harvest. The songs range from pretty okay ("'A' Road", "Ghost Riders In The Sky") to downright dreadful ("Hey Coyote", "Jim Needs An Animal"), with not one track that's as magical as any of the band's best work. I would say that it feels like a collection of B-sides, except that Concrete Blonde's B-side anthology (STILL IN HOLLYWOOD) is one of my favorite records of theirs. It feels more like the noodling, half-finished tracks that sometimes get posted on the Concrete Blonde web site. These are cool and everything, but they're not album caliber. Here's hoping that MOJAVE was just an aberration, and that the Blonde's next album sees them returning to their former magnificence, or even going back to the perfectly satisfactory level of GROUP THERAPY. Maybe if they all moved back to Los Angeles...



"

A western gothic...

jon sieruga | Redlands, CA USA | 07/31/2004

(3 out of 5 stars)

"Concrete Blonde is back, and while no skins are shed or true lives revealed, it is a very atmospheric album. Johnette Napolitano & Jim Mankey still work well together, turning the Yucca Valley skies into a black velvet painting and the desolate Southern California landscapes into burning melancholia. But is this the real Johnette? I can't tell if these songs are ripped from her heart or from a lime-soaked beer bash she had once upon a time in the desert. The cowboy cliches get a little thick(although I always thought she might do a decent cover of "Ghost Riders in the Sky", and she does), but the grooves are deep enough to warrant repeated, pleasurable listenings(which I couldn't say about the too-wicked "Group Therapy"). Too bad a more astute music editor wasn't aboard to help abort some of Napolitano's more pretentious leanings(and spoken word aberrations). The CD's best song, "True to This", is hurt slightly by Johnette's rushing of some of the lyrics(and apparently creating some new ones, throwing off the song's rythmn). "The 'a' Road" is a great, gritty opener and "Because I Can" shows there's still fire in this unit, whether their scenario now evokes Anne Rice in the desert or lonesome West Coast vampires sleeping in tumbleweed graves."

"Still in Hollywood"? Not anymore.

sgnimmuc t. | Hollywood, California United States | 07/03/2004

(4 out of 5 stars)

"Mojave is a dreamy, slo-mo, rock-n-roll peyote trip. Dark and lush, crazy as a sandstorm. Not their usual fare here, all the catchy rock hooks and riffs they're famous for. There's some of that, yes, of course, but this recording is a bit too epic, a bit too experimental, to rely solely on that. After a few focused listens, it really started to move me. You DO feel like you're at the edge of civilization, out there in the desert with the spiders and the coyotes and the sun. I saw them perform tracks from this new album yesterday at Amoeba Records here in LA, and they were absolutely stunning. I have never experienced so pure and raw a trio of true rock-n-rollers. Breathtaking."