Gang Of Four – Content (Yep Roc)
Gang Of Four are an almost universally acclaimed band, and they deserve to be. If there were a postpunk hall of fame, they’d claim membership by virtue of their debut album, 1979’s Entertainment!, alone. In fact, it often seems that Entertainment!, alone or nearly so, is the measure by which their entire career is evaluated. When the original lineup regrouped in 2003, they were received as returning heroes by an alternative rock scene that had finally caught up to the nervous funk-infused postpunk sound that Gang Of Four pioneered decades before. When they did return, they were often discussed as if they had been gone for two decades. And yet, albums under the name Gang Of Four had been released as recently as 1995’s Shrinkwrapped. The original foursome had dissolved much earlier, though, with original bassist Dave Allen replaced after 1982’s “To Hell With Poverty” single, at first by future Ani DiFranco bassist Sara Lee and later by faceless studio musicians; and drummer Hugo Burnham leaving later that year, after the Songs Of The Free LP, to be replaced by a drum machine. Guitarist Andy Gill and singer Jon King, the self-admitted “Gang Of Two,” made three more albums (Hard, Mall, and Shrinkwrapped) over the next 12 years, lasting much longer than the original lineup and dragging the Gang Of Four name through the mud–at least in the eyes of those who even bothered to pay attention. In 2003, when the original foursome came back, an unspoken mutual agreement to pretend that nothing Gang Of Four did between 1983 and 1995 had ever happened seemed to exist between band, fans and press.
Gang Of Four – Content (Yep Roc)
Gang Of Four are an almost universally acclaimed band, and they deserve to be. If there were a postpunk hall of fame, they’d claim membership by virtue of their debut album, 1979’s Entertainment!, alone. In fact, it often seems that Entertainment!, alone or nearly so, is the measure by which their entire career is evaluated. When the original lineup regrouped in 2003, they were received as returning heroes by an alternative rock scene that had finally caught up to the nervous funk-infused postpunk sound that Gang Of Four pioneered decades before. When they did return, they were often discussed as if they had been gone for two decades. And yet, albums under the name Gang Of Four had been released as recently as 1995’s Shrinkwrapped. The original foursome had dissolved much earlier, though, with original bassist Dave Allen replaced after 1982’s “To Hell With Poverty” single, at first by future Ani DiFranco bassist Sara Lee and later by faceless studio musicians; and drummer Hugo Burnham leaving later that year, after the Songs Of The Free LP, to be replaced by a drum machine. Guitarist Andy Gill and singer Jon King, the self-admitted “Gang Of Two,” made three more albums (Hard, Mall, and Shrinkwrapped) over the next 12 years, lasting much longer than the original lineup and dragging the Gang Of Four name through the mud–at least in the eyes of those who even bothered to pay attention. In 2003, when the original foursome came back, an unspoken mutual agreement to pretend that nothing Gang Of Four did between 1983 and 1995 had ever happened seemed to exist between band, fans and press.
The first effort of the reunited band was 2005’s Return The Gift, a compilation of rerecorded songs from Gang Of Four’s classic early releases. While it was good to hear original bassist Allen playing on Songs Of The Free tunes “I Love A Man In Uniform” and “We Live As We Dream, Alone,” the rerecordings were mostly of tracks from classic albums Entertainment! and 1981 followup Solid Gold–songs that hardly needed new interpretations to bring them to classic status. Indeed, the rerecordings almost seemed to devalue the songs as a whole, and made some fans feel they’d have been better off never hearing them in the first place. Soon after the release of Return The Gift, Hugo Burnham’s health forced him to retire from the group. He was at least replaced by a human this time–Mark Heaney, who, it turned out, had played drums on most of Return The Gift anyway–but nonetheless, for those who remembered the long, slow decline of the original Gang Of Four, it was a bad omen. A much worse one was Allen’s abrupt, unexplained departure from the band in 2008. He was replaced by Thomas McNeice, formerly of Scottish also-ran pop group El Presidente, and it’s this lineup that has finally brought us the first new Gang Of Four material in fifteen years.
The point of all of this history is to remind everyone that Gang Of Four, regardless of their legendary status in today’s music scene, do not exactly have a perfect discography. There’s admittedly a huge contrast between the way Content has been received and the completely uninterested reaction early 90s efforts Mall and Shrinkwrapped received at the time of their release. Now that Gang Of Four’s time has finally come, the arrival of new material from this long-dormant legend has caused a lot of fevered anticipation in the alternative rock press. And Content is not constructed in a way that would make immediately obvious its shortcomings in comparison with classic Gang Of Four material. Unlike the 90s-era Gang Of Two material, Gill and King at least replaced Burnham and Allen with actual people this time, so the rhythm section, if not the definitive one, at least sounds real. Andy Gill is still capable of generating the sharp, metallic guitar sound that characterizes his best work, and Jon King’s hyperactively uneasy vocal tone and paranoid lyrics are still in fine form. Everything sounds the way it should, and that will avoid the immediate disappointment that might have otherwise characterized this album’s reception. However, the songwriting is nowhere near the level of quality achieved on Entertainment!, and for that reason I imagine that a lot of people who started out excited about this album will cool quickly and end up shelving it permanently after a dozen listens or so.
The second half of the album makes this reality obvious. “I Party All The Time” starts with a scraping-metal guitar intro that sounds perfect, but the studio gloss that permeates the sound of the rhythm section turns bass and drums from funk-influenced punk to an outright funk sound that is closer to disco than the postpunk sound Gang Of Four are famous for. This resemblance grows more and more pronounced as the song goes on, until the appearance, on the final chorus, of the same female backup soul singers that dominated Songs Of The Free single “I Love A Man In Uniform.” That 1982 track is the easiest song to point towards when I want to make the distinction between Gang Of Four stuff I like and the stuff that I can’t stand, and to hear those same elements show up halfway through this album does not make me happy. That song is followed by “A Fruitfly In The Beehive,” a slow, subtle tune that mixes the same disco-funk melodic approach of the previous song with the stretched-out minimalism of Wire’s 154 album. This track has more merit in theory than does its immediate predecessor, but the execution is lackluster, and it’s followed by a track that is outright bad. “It Was Never Gonna Turn Out Too Good” isn’t even a good idea with bad execution–it’s a bad idea. Pointlessly distorted vocals over percussion-based minimalist musical backing that is eminently forgettable. Content gets better at the end; closing track “Second Life” equals the more promising first half of the album as far as quality, generating an upbeat pulse driven by the interplay between Gill’s harsh guitar work and Thomas McNeice’s bouncing bassline. Ending on an up note will surely enhance at least some people’s overall impression of the album, so “Second Life”‘s place in the running order was a wise decision.
However, even towards the beginning of the album, where its best songs are to be found, things aren’t ideal. “Who Am I?” doesn’t feature Motown-style backing vocals, but the song’s choruses are constructed in a manner that wouldn’t make their inclusion a stretch. In fact, this fact crystallizes a lot of my issues with this album. The choice of instrumentation can certainly cover for a lot of songwriting defects. While good songs will shine through bad production, though, perfect production can’t save mediocre songs. When Gang Of Four regrouped in their original lineup in 2003, and focused their set lists on their earliest and best material, it was easy to convince ourselves that they’d returned to form after a long period in the wilderness. However, now that they’ve delivered new material to the world, what seems clearest is the fact that they wrote albums like Mall much more recently than they wrote Solid Gold. The most interesting, and damning, fact I’ve heard about Gang Of Four circa 2010 was from a friend who went to see them play a couple of weeks ago. He informed me that their setlist is just as focused on their first two albums as it was seven years ago when I saw them, and that they only played two songs from the new album. They’re a nostalgia act now–I imagine that at most of their shows, the songs from Content are the ones that send people headed for the bar for drink refills. When a band is at their most vital, new songs are likely to be greeted with attention and enthusiasm. Bands whose new songs are the ones fans are least interested in are bands who’ve ceased to be relevant. Odds are that in five years, people will barely remember that Gang Of Four released a new album in 2011. And based on the way this album sounds, that is as it should be.
