A Year of Music

Pinch’s Underwater Dancehall seems to be another in a long series of dance music albums that’s intended to bust out of the artistic ghetto from which it emerged. The production is bright and sparkly and about half the guest vocals are the kind of melismatic R&B that producers have been using to appeal to an imaginary “mainstream” since Soul II Soul, if not since Giorgio Moroder started working with Donna Summer[1]. More damningly, since both the vocal and instrumental versions of the tracks are included on the album, it’s possible to hear just how gratuitous those vocals really are. There’s nothing wrong with being tooled for a broad audience in theory, but in this context (and maybe it’s just how it’s striking me tonight) it comes across as possibly a little over-eager and most definitely too busy (“Brighter Day”, for instance, works much better – works perfectly, in fact – as an instrumental, which is too bad, because the vocal would be appealing in a less crowded setting). About a third of the album is spooky and compulsive listening, a third doesn’t do much for me and a third is plasticky faux-soul / faux-dancehall / faux-R&B that makes me itch. I think I’d like it twice as much if Pinch had chosen one each from the vocal and dub versions, and had jettisoned the wailing divas.

1: that this produced “I Feel Love”, quite possibly one of the finest dancefloor tracks of all time is, uh, HEY LOOK OVER THERE IT’S A BEAR.