The basic gist of the story goes like this: I did something wrong, I confess, I’m sorry. I did something wrong, I confess, I’m sorry. You know what? I did something wrong, I confess…you get the picture? It doesn’t take a justice department to work out that such persistent offenders of the heart like Usher may actually be taking perverse joy in all these little heart dramas and are about as capable of feeling genuine adult remorse as your average con is capable of getting a job. Let’s face it both kinds of offenders operate in the same murky underworld of arrested development: stunted mental capacities, stunted emotional capacities. Like children, they hard rehearse all the complex tribulations of adult relationships and friendships, without really ever coming close to actual experience. But this could be said of most folks today: what we lack in depth and love we more than make up for in well staged displays of sentimentality. But I digress…
‘Confessions’ will inevitably provide the average chad on the street with a fair to middling bible of quotes about failed relationships, fame and fortune and long hours spent on the phone. But as unlikely as Usher is to be hanging around bus-shelters, grabbing the odd ride on his mate’s vespa moped and sinking a few bottles of Budweiser behind next doors’ leylandii you can’t but feel that anyone outside this group of dopes and miscreants is actually going to buy into this record. Unfortunately this kind of group occupies a substantial area of the buying market in the UK and the album looks all set to earn as much gold as your average chad can wear around the outside of his tee-shirt.
That it’s a classic and smooth ride goes without saying. This is R n B of the slinkiest, silkiest calibre. Baggy breakbeats, tender and minimal bass runs, moist keypads, pizzicato stabs, lush pianos and ultra high-octave strings. Pour into the mix some fairly nifty nylon guitar and heavenly smooth vocals (courtesy of Usher himself and Tony ‘Prof’ Tolbert) and guest raps from Lil’ Jon and Ludacris on club and chart monster ‘Yeah’ and you have a well crafted and well conceived concept album. As all the songs reflect the self-evident stages of sin and redemption, it would be excessive to quote each song at length, but needless to say that beyond the booty-shaking sass and vigour of ‘Yeah’ and eccentric floor stomper ‘Caught Up’ there’s a fairly consistent horizon of calm and reflection, of which the Dozier/Holland inspired soul-funk of ‘Throwback’ and the Smokey R’s of ‘Can U Handle It?’ and ‘Do It To Me’ burn the brightest. Occasionally though quality control slips into the unfortunate territory of Craig David (‘Burn’) and the even more apologetic dirty, sticky, scatty mud-ground of Blazin Squad (‘Confessions Part II’).
It might not truly threaten soul revivalists like Amp Fiddler for credibility, but bearing in mind its target audience (underprivileged white boys and girls under the misapprehension that they’re Afro-American and living life on the razor’s edge) ‘Confessions’ is a surprisingly adequate listen. Afterall, it’s not Usher’s fault that the closest thing our English boys and girls have to ‘stars’ are the jerks manufactured on Pop Idol or that the nearest thing we have to ‘stripes’ are the lines we have stitched down the sides of our Sainsbury sweat-pants, it’s ours. We were simply too embarassed to tell them that they were British and that their own red, white and blue waved in a far less exciting manner.