MUSIC REVIEWS
Boy George and Culture Club,
“Life” (BMG)
Like clockwork, every decade or two you can count on a Culture Club reunion album. In 1999, “Don’t Mind If I Do” closed a 13-year gap and now, not even 20 years later, “Life” has arrived after long gestation and difficult birth. Thankfully, the whole band appears in good health and this 11-track baby has Boy George’s deeper-but-wiser voice and no DNA tests are needed to recognize the contributions of Roy Hay (guitar and keyboards), Mikey Craig (bass) and Jon Moss (drums). Pass the cigars.
Setting a precedent for the 2029 compilation “Bono and U2—Just the Hits,” though probably not the 75th anniversary tour in 2037 of Mick Jagger and the Rolling Stones (no way Keith Richards acquiesces to that!), “Life” is credited to Boy George and Culture Club. What? Why? Huh?
Initially expected as “Tribes” years ago, the band has chosen to record anew some of the tunes from that unreleased collection. “Runaway Train,” once billed as a country-ish Johnny Cash tribute, is now a catchy soul sensation awash in strings and horns, while “More Than Silence” has sadly lost its erstwhile rocking guitar but found an extra layer of emotion in Boy George’s vocals.
“Oil & Water” is a ballad in Elton John mode, usually, and here, too, a seal of quality and “Different Man” is more ’70s soul, partly inspired by one of Sly Stone’s many hardships. It would hardly be Culture Club without a little reggae and first single “Let Somebody Love You” pleasantly fits the bill.
After all the distractions, detours and restarts, Culture Club—Boy George included, of course—has made a “Life” that’s full of the sounds that gained the band worldwide acclaim, bringing fans comfort and joy until the next reunion. If they can wait that long.— Pablo Gorondi, The Associated Press
Marianne Faithfull, “Negative
Capability” (BMG)
Marianne Faithfull is a great musical survivor. She went from pure-voiced chanteuse of “As Tears Go By” to emblem of 1960s drug excess before re-emerging in 1979 with “Broken English,” a soul-baring blast of an album that still packs a punch.
Since then, Faithfull has matured into a diva of melancholy, her expressive voice roughened and deepened by time and life. “Negative Capability,” the 71-year-old singer’s 21st album, is a moving, quietly majestic collection of songs dwelling on aging, pain, loss and loneliness— hardly the usual rock ‘n’ roll fare.
Faithfull is chief lyricist, working with musical collaborators including Mark Lanegan, Ed Harcourt and Nick Cave, who co-wrote, plays piano and sings on the single “The Gypsy Faerie Queen,” a midsummer night’s meditation inspired by Shakespearean mysticism.
Faithfull and her producers, Rob Ellis and Warren Ellis (one of Cave’s Bad Seeds), have crafted a suite of tuneful, autumnal, tentatively hopeful songs, with simple, effective arrangements driven by acoustic guitar, meditative piano and somber strings.
Collectively, they work a mournful magic. Faithfull brings an ominous touch to Bob Dylan’s “It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue” and revisits two of her own songs: the Rolling Stones-penned “As Tears Go By,” which grows more poignant with age, and the mesmeric “Witches’ Song” from “Broken English.”
“Born to Live,” written for the late Anita Pallenberg, wishes for “a good death,” while “Don’t Go” mourns another departed friend, Martin Stone.
“They Come at Night” is a bleak response to the 2015 attacks in Faithfull’s adopted home city of Paris, while “No Moon in Paris” finds loneliness, rather than love, in the City of Light.
But it’s not all darkness. Faithfull’s indomitable spirit seeks more—more life, more hope, more love.
“In My Own Particular Way” offers a wry self-appraisal: “I know I’m not young and I’m damaged/But I’m still pretty, kind and funny.” And, declares Faithfull: “I’m ready to love.”— Jill Lawless, The Associated Press