Voyage to IndiaArtist: India.ArieGenre: R&B; Publisher: Motown Released: 9/24/02 |
A Review by Bobby Lashley
10/19/2002
The most beautiful and the most frustrating aspect of India.Arie as an artist is that she sees her work as part of her personal journey, with her songs serving as travelogues. Part of the Earthseed collective, an eclectic group of soul artists from Atlanta, Georgia; Arie has garnered critical acclaim and millions of fans by invoking a mother earth-goddess persona of wisdom and exhibiting an almost tenacious dedication to positivity. And I would be lying to you if part of it wasn't quite effective, even stirring at times. At its best, it can illuminate her work with a warmth, happiness and even a nuanced joy; for the core of her work is created out of love and the rich populist sensibility of her musical predecessors (Gaye, Hathaway, Wonder). And at the times when she frees herself of commercial leanings and the concept of selling her own persona, she can show an endless potential; exhibiting inklings that she might someday make records as great as the soul giants that she venerates so much.
The problem is that her persona can also make her work bloody fucking frustrating to listen to. The unevenness of her debut album, Acoustic Soul came from the fact that half the songs were examples of India using the precepts of her persona to make great work, while the other half were just India selling the persona itself. The center of what makes Voyage to India disappointing lies in how that frustrating duality is rearranged, condensed, and accelerated on a greater level. While Acoustic Soul was a beautifully frustrating blend of vaguely crafted folkie-soul filler and innovative alternative soul gems, Voyage is a thematically concise yet artistically asphyxiating whole, where rich, lush guitar riffs and beautiful melodies are trapped within a frightfully concealing, rhythm track driven, vaguely musical body. Where before she was given a room to define herself as an artist, here she is restricted to an almost tedious medium, where her eclectically beautiful musical touches are stopped before they even begin, in a fatuous admonition to Destiny's Child-esque musical tracks.
Much of that blame can be laid on the head of Kedar Massenburg, present president of Motown; who is most famous for his boorish behavior in kicking D'Angelo to the curb, pathetically promoting Erykah Badu and almost bankrupting the company before Universal mercifully bought it and kept the name for merchandising purposes. He is responsible for the rise of “neo-soul” as it is now viewed insofar as he doesn't sell music as much as he sells memory of past greats. Both D'Angelo and Erykah Badu rebelled from the respective new wave Marvin Gaye and Billie Holiday personas that he had for them. His "all Marvin, all the time" musical credo that he tried to make Chico Debarge fit was ridiculous (Marvin's themes were the divergent concepts of sexuality and spirituality, Chico's theme is the fact that he got out of jail. Insert sardonic joke here). And his watered down minimalist Stevie Wonder-isms marred Acoustic Soul and ruins Voyage.
That's not to say that the album doesn't have its moments, however, they just make it more vexing than it already is. “Good Man”'s beauty might come from strong lyrics ensconced by disorganized melodies within a thin musical strand, but what strengths that are there make it the album's best song. It also shows that when she cuts the new-agey fat from her lyrics, she can be one hell of a songwriter. The song's story, a tale of a wife who lost her husband, has the potential for emotional mawkishness but Arie's personal touch works here. There are no R Kelly-esque slavishly ephemeral declarations, or Michael Jackson-styled crocodile tears; Just India inhabiting the song, giving it a subtle directness and blues ethic of transcending the pain around her (a preciously rare emotion here but more on that later).
The album is at its best when it adds more of a rhythmic dynamic and let's India's beautiful alto spread its range. “Beautiful Surprise” benefits from a concise song structure, an elegant, melodic sensibility and Arie's great chops. Her persona is working in all cylinders here, as her positive energy gives the song a rapturous swoop. As well as Arie getting into the happiness of the love song, you can also hear her relishing in the joy of creating. It shows her Stevie influence at its best, as in the songs lucid glow she takes her love for her man and makes it a shared experience, with both love and art working on the same intrinsic level. “The One” is the only time on the album when she really “gets down.” Although the rhythm track robs the song of a bit of its life, the subtle funkiness of its structure, India's lyrical gifts and a kickass horn section provide enough to spare.
The bulk of the rest of the album might not be sunk by the minimalist production, but it sure has a hard time keeping above water. Although “Little Things,” the album's first single, is enjoyable with its intelligent lyrical play on a sample (she uses the Rufus “Hollywood” sample in a song that shows that she isn't Hollywood herself), something is missing from it. It's way too demure to compete with Acoustic Soul's singles. It doesn't have that straight church backbeat that accentuated “Video”'s message. Her voice is nice but nowhere near as much as it was in “Ready For Love,” where it was the catalyst for one of the best soul singles of 2001. And the light thread of a sonic structure doesn't do the song justice, as the message, no matter how pretentious it can get (“I do this for love of music not for the glitter and gold”?) deserves more of a symphonic cloak than mere top 40 threadbare trappings.
“Talk To Her” and “Slow Down” are wonderful examples of Arie's earth momma wit; but they are screaming for a musical backdrop of backbeats, hand claps and tight percussion, not teeth grindingly repetitive rhythm tracks. “Talk” is Arie the preacher at her most appealing. Like such soul goddesses as Res, Me'Shell NdegéOcello, Angie Stone and Joi, she can compellingly carry a feminist message of respect. Unlike the aforementioned four, who wear their art-soul defiance on their sleeves (not a damn thing wrong with that), Arie sugarcoats her message with a moderate lyrical sensibility and gorgeous pop trappings. Lyrically, “Talk To Her” is as good as "Video" as she gets her r.e.s.p.e.c.t. message across while tickling your ears and tugging your heartstrings. It works because you can hear the love that she has for the brothers that she is admonishing to act rightly toward women, making it less a sermon and more a heart to heart talk. But I can lose myself in the lyrics barely long enough to forget that the song's musical accompaniment is four chord changes and a guitar riff played over and over and over again. "Slow Down" accomplishes the same lyrical results on the subject of ego and is also ruined by nearly the exact same rhythm track. (aaggh!)
"Headed In The Right Direction" is adult contemporary in every sense of the word, and that is far from a compliment. The problem with the song, as with the genre of A.C. itself, is that it's basically musical ether. Great music is a lot like great ribs—no matter how meaty (Stax) or lean (Luther) it sticks to you in both content and memory. From the opening guitar riffs of "Day Tripper" and "Respect," to the soaring orchestral bridge of "What's Going On" to the art-funk/church/jubilee/crunk backbeat of Outkast's "Rosa Parks," the sonics of great music stays with you. The fact that you can hear a great song thousands of times, know its riffs, chord changes and chord progressions before they even come on, and still be in enthralled by the song is part of the unexplainable ethos of art.
"Direction" achieves and embodies the exact opposite. A flute that is supposed to evoke a "world music" sound plays a lethargic note that drifts into the air for three seconds as if it never happened, then plays again to repeat the process, leaving the listener clueless to why it ever played at all. The Spanish guitar strings are so lifeless that you barely even notice that they are playing and not just resembling stringy noise. Arie's self help lyrics and performance evoke the most mawkish of New Age clichés. Everything from improvisation, variety and musical communication is sacrificed for the aspect of mellowness and pleasantry; only to hear her version of mellowness is to hear a sound too close to emotional death for my taste.
Then there are songs that just don't work whatsoever. Nearly everything about "The Truth" is forced. It's a warm love song but the lyrics don't seamlessly swing like the best of her love ballads. The lyrics are garbled, as India tries to force what she has to say into the song instead of letting her words flow with the music. The word play is forced improvisation, without that magical gospel-jazz-blues element to make that improvisation seem perfect. "Complicated Melody," to use a pun, is in dire need of one. No matter how affable a half finished song it is, it is still a half finished song; and the end of the hook ("I almost cannot sing it on key") sounds more like a creative back-out from her than a warm tribute to the man she is in love with.
But the albums biggest clunker lies in "God Is Real." I say that not because I don't believe in the title's premise (I do) but because she makes the mistake that too many modern gospel/CCF artists do, in mistaking her own personal experience as some touch tone for a universal religious statement. The song's whole, India.Arie wondering why the whole world doesn't believe in God like she does, set to a musically watered down paean to Stevie Wonder's Journey Through the Secret Life of Plants, doesn't bother me as much as these first verses:
INDIA: "I heard a man on the radio today"Now you might ask, what's wrong with that? My answer would be that this is coming from an artist whose stock and trade is evoking a persona of a all-knowing, never suffering alt-soul goddess who doesn't even breathe a damaged air. Arie and her message run antithetical to the concept of the blues. For her to condescend to somebody who has had a hard time and might know something about them, isn't just condescending, it's frighteningly pretentious.
man: (explains that he has had a hard life and doesn't want to believe in God.)
INDIA: "I must confess I disagree with what he had to say, how can he not believe that God is real, I don't understand how he could feel that way."
It also underlines how her vaunted persona is starting to get a little tiresome. The music of Stevie Wonder and Donny Hathaway, her two biggest influences, could get a little sappy, but it was also infused by an understanding that true positivity comes not contrary to, but in spite of life's obstacles. Both blended that understanding with a subtle realism that made their best work some of the most beautiful expressions of joy in the history of soul. India's all sweetness, all the time approach might have been appealing with Acoustic Soul, but its lack of any emotion besides saccharine is robbing her music of a much needed sense of reality. It is as if we are listening to India.Arie the Motown product and not India.Arie the artist.
"Interested," the hidden track, crystallizes my frustrations about her. Its minimalist hook is effervescently catchy just like Stevie Wonder. The guitar licks are just like the ones that Stevie Wonder liked to produce with Jeff Beck. The synthesizer and keyboards are played just like Stevie Wonder used to play them. The background singer sings just like Stevie Wonder (or at least tries to).
Are you getting the drift of what's wrong with the song? Where in the hidden track for her first album she paid a beautiful tribute to Wonder in "Stevie Wonderful," here she just bites of him. And Hard. Taking several chunks. That might have been enough in 1995, when R&B; fans were so starved for an artist besides Luther and Prince to make a great record, but this is 2002 and she, much like many of "neo soul"'s practitioners, needs to move forward as an artist.
I like India.Arie, I really do. I also understand why she has achieved such a following and receives such love from her fans. The damage done by the vulgar minstrely of what has become gangsta rap and the abrogation of standards of the mallrat generation of R&B; singers has been so great, that an artist who can actually carry a tune, play an instrument, write decent lyrics and not sell blackness as some sort of vision of misogyny, brutality or nihilism is celebrated as somebody major to enter the musical spectrum.
But damnit, I want more! Merely playing instruments, writing your own songs and not calling each other b*tches and n*ggas is only one step of the artistic battle. If India wants to be as great as she aspires to be, she is going to have to do as Wonder did in 1971, that is take a fevent control of every single solitary aspect of her production. Actually going on the personal journey that she says she is might help too, because if Voyage To India's songs were her travelogues, they indicate that half the time she is bullshitting her reader. Even the worst moments of the album were enjoyable, but that's not the point. Simply put, Voyage is the sound of an artist who could, should and needs to do better.
© Copyright ToxicUniverse.com 10/19/2002
