Rick Bryant in The Neighbours.

OUT OF TIME: Jive Bombed

Out Of Time (OOT) is a column that blithely ignores consumer dictates and release schedules. This time, Gary Steel looks at an album by a Kiwi soul legend that, when it was released in June last year, was savaged without mercy.

rick5FOR THOSE TWO at the back, who missed out on the last 40 years of NZ music, Rick Bryant is considered a bona fide legend. To cut a long story short, he was a member of seminal Kiwi bands like Mammal, Rough Justice and later, the Windy City Strugglers, and his reputation for squeezing the requisite emotion out of a blue-eyed soul or R&B tune made him stand out in a scene not renowned for its Otis Reddings or Sam Cookes. He made it to the front cover of John Dixโ€™s celebrated history of NZ music, Stranded In Paradise, but in recent years, became more renowned for his small-time dealings in marijuana, which resulted into time in jail a few years back.
After his release, my dear friend Steve Braunias wrote a great piece for Metro magazine. โ€œHis voice is his careful, meticulous art, a thing of rare and expressive beauty,โ€ he wrote. I donโ€™t know if Braunias saw that heโ€™d been quoted thus in a press release in aid of the 2013 release by Rick Bryant & The Jive Bombers, The Black Soap From Monkeyburg, but itโ€™s shows the way a line can come back to haunt you. He wasnโ€™t to know that the album would be widely dissed, and that even a reviewer of Graham Reidโ€™s repute would note that Bryantโ€™s โ€œvoice is frequently a lesser and often shredded version of what it once was, his range fraying at the edges, and only rarely does he bring the fire or emotion that was a hallmark of his best work.โ€
I thought that it wasnโ€™t so much Bryantโ€™s voice that was the problem, but the way it was recorded. Perhaps a fairly contemporary producer like Ed Cake, despite his credentials for hip alternative rock/pop, didnโ€™t really know how to capture Bryant at his throaty best. Too often, the voice sounds isolated, like itโ€™s floating along on top of the music, when it should be integrated, and this very upfront mixing is what too often makes it sound laboured, or just not that great.
Having said that, The Black Soap From Monkeyburg isnโ€™t as bad as some reviews suggest, and every now and then, Bryantโ€™s voice does a convincing job. There are songs here where Bryantโ€™s voice sounds great: gruff, a real manโ€™s voice, with the kind of texture you might find in an old blues singer.
The-Black-Soap-from-Monkeyburg-15112282-7But the recordโ€™s greatest strength is Bryantโ€™s often double-edged, slyly humorous lyrics. Thereโ€™s a bit of George Melly or even Noel Coward in these songs, with lines like: โ€œAllow me to propose an absurdityโ€ and song titles like โ€˜Red Meatโ€™ (โ€œโ€ฆand bad behaviourโ€). And he knows how to get real, as well, on a lyric like: โ€œShe said breaking your heart at your ageโ€ฆ thatโ€™ll really hurtโ€.
Bryant has got some significant helping hands like drummer Ross Burge (Muttonbirds), guitarists Geoff Maddock (Goldenhorse) and Neil Watson (Tim Finn), but what ultimately works against it is the same thing thatโ€™s dogged his music in all his bands through the years: while itโ€™s admirable that someone is determined to represent old-fashioned soul and R&B down here in the Antipodes, stylistically, thereโ€™s nothing new here, nothing to add to the genre.
If only Bryantโ€™s music had the personality of his lyrics, and was willing to assert its idiosyncrasies, rather than slavishly follow old-time genres.
Some of the songs here remind me of the worst of Wellington bands from the early 1980s: tepid rockโ€™nโ€™soul arrangements, horrid female backing vocals, absurdly clichรฉd Stones-type riffs, pub rock, and a bit of New Orleans swing for good measure.

Bryant in Mammal.
Bryant in Mammal.
Since this album, which following a launch party seemed to just wither away, not to be mentioned in good company, Bryantโ€™s 1970s group Rough Justice have managed a successful reformation tour, which Iโ€™m sure brought back a lot of great memories.
As for The Black Soap From Monkeyburg, itโ€™s neither great, nor pitiably bad. Itโ€™s just a pity that few have mentioned its attributes. Itโ€™s a deeply flawed record, but it does show that a) the guy can growl and holler, and b) heโ€™s a better lyric writer than most. All he needs, perhaps, is the right set of co-conspirators. GARY STEEL

Rick Bryant & The Jive Bombers โ€“ The Black Soap From Monkeyburg

Music Rating = 3/5
Sonic Rating = 3/5

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Steel has been penning his pungent prose for 40 years for publications too numerous to mention, most of them consigned to the annals of history. He is Witchdoctor's Editor-In-Chief/Music and Film Editor. He has strong opinions and remains unrepentant. Steel's full bio can be found here

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