On Prince Paul and Handsome Boy Modelling School’s ‘White People’ (2004) we laughed our socks off at the extended ‘so naff, we’re cool’ handsome boy modelling motif. Trouble is, they extended, stretched and drew it out like a last dying breath over the 60 minute duration. And we didn’t like it. And then there was the fact that it was too much like a Royal Variety performance. The 25 or so cameos from folks like Del The Funky Homosapien, De La Soul, Limp Bizkit’s Mike Shinoda, Jamie Cullum, Mike Patton, Alex Kapranos and the Mars Volta din’t exactly fail to satisfy –it just tried to cram too much in. It was like someone expecting you laugh twice at the same joke.
Then there was Prince Paul’s ‘Psychoanalysis’ (2002). Not some ‘self-indulgent clutter of odd samples from ancient vinyl, bizarre conversations, and the occasional cool beat’, we said, but a funky release-valve, ‘a way to entertain some of his funkier fantasies’. And then there was his last album, ‘So…How’s Your Girl?’ – but we missed that, so we can’t comment.
Like many of his incarnations and richly populated funkadelic variety-shows, Baby Elephant’s ‘Turn My Teeth Up’ is a riotous and consistently amusing record that’s draws on a curiosity shop of vintage keyboards, synthesizers, moogs, string samples and pianos. It also draws generously on vintage jazz and B-Boy signatures too. The problem is, the album draws so successfully on old technology and old habits that it falls some way short of being ‘valid’. It’s all rather like a gallery of fading stars getting together for one last shy at the coconut. Burt Lancaster and Kurt Douglas in ‘Tough Guys’. Like that. But without the stunts. It’s great seeing them together, but some of the old magic is gone.
That said, tracks like ‘Babyelephants N Thangs’ featuring George Clinton) and ‘Plainfield’ (featuring Shocko) offer no end of gentle satisfaction. Not much in the way of ‘girlie action’, admittedly – but the warm, synthetic keys and lucid beats of both tunes provide a rich, foamy jazz basis upon which the rest of the album settles. The dub-reggae jiggery pokery of ‘Cool Runnings’ (featuring Yellowman) might wrong you, but it’s not unpleasant, whereas the Nano technology and goo of gloomy electronica tune, ‘Even Stronger’ simply sounds well out of context.
If anything, the increasingly popular ‘Sci-Fi-Vintage’ binary theme doesn’t peak with David Byrne’s contribution, ‘How Does The Brainwave’. It’s not bad – but it just doesn’t quite get off the launch pad. Much like the album. In fact it’s rather like listening the Spice Girls rehearse a comeback tour. On acid.
Dig the space-age glam and the analogue. Don’t dig the digital.