AMBERSUNSHOWER / “Running Song”

I like songs with the word ‘song’ right there in the title - it’s self-referential in an understated kind of way - as in this one, Ambersunshower’s "Running Song." Aside from her immediate family and Tricky fans who read their CD booklets, I’m not sure that anyone knows who Ambersunshower (government name: Ambersunshower Smith) is, but back in 1997 she released an alternative/R&B album that sounds as if it should be normal pop music except for the feeling you can’t help having that the voice on the record is capable of some serious weirdness. "Running Song" is based on a loop of Loose Ends’ 1985 classic "Hangin’ On A String" and was produced by PM Dawn, the fat brother/skinny brother duo who had minor hits with the whiny “Set Adrift On Memory Bliss” and the extra-whiny "I’d Die Without You," but are best known for being the recipients of a mid-performance physical beat-down by Mr. Stop Violence himself KRS-One. Back to Amber: the as-promised weirdness turns up in the bridge of "Running Song" where, for no apparent reason, a military march breaks out…in German. (It’s a Kraftwerk sample, I think.) The other standout tune of Amber’s Walter T. Smith album is "Look Around My Window" - a triumph of ambiguity during which Amber wails “I laid him down” and you can’t tell if she means she had sex with him, killed him, or just paid for funeral - and I could MP3 that one too, but if I did, you’d have no reason to spend your 47 cents at Amazon to get a copy of your very own and that wouldn’t be fun for anyone. (I’m not kidding about that price – you’ll pay more for the postage than for the actual CD - and now that I’ve set a record for the most run-on sentences in a single three-paragraph review, I’m done.) —Mtume ya Salaam Click here to purchase Walter T Smith    Bonus tracks: Loose Ends – "Hangin’ On A String" from A Little Spice (MCA, 1985)   PM Dawn – "I’d Die Without You" from The Bliss Album…? (Gee Street/Island, 1993)   Boogie Down Productions feat. KRS-One – "Duck Down" from Sex And Violence (Jive, 1992)   Tricky feat. Hawkman & Ambersunshower – "Over Me" from Blowback (Hollywood, 2001)             Parents just don’t understand          I guess it really is (sometimes) true, parents just don’t understand, cause for sure, I don’t get this. It’s over my head and way under my feet, or missed me by a mile, or, hey, I’m a pretty big fella and if I don’t get it… that’s OK. Don’t explain. Don’t get me wrong, it’s obvious Ambersunshower can sing, but it’s also obvious that whatever she’s singing about is for the in-crowd and not easily understood by those of us accustomed to melody, harmony and/or rhythm. Of course, I exaggerate because there is a thudding back beat but...oh, nevermind. You say apples, I say pineapple. All of which is (un)fairly (un)intelligent commentary coming from someone who is a producer/DJ/critic, but sometimes some stuff just irritates me, and though I can hear some value in it, I just want it to hurry up and be over. I’d sure like to hear Amber in different circumstances, and then maybe I would be willing to spend 99 cents to download the song, but all of this taken together ain’t worth six bits (that’s old skool slang: two bits = twenty-five cents), so I guess Amazon had the price about right. On second thought, tell me, do you think this stuff was simply meant to be annoying to an older generation or was this a genuine attempt at making hip music… Third thought, I don’t have a need to know. Next! —Kalamu ya Salaam             Keep it up          Was that really necessary? Keep it up and I’m going to post a few of my favorite Bad Brains selections. Now that will be “annoying to an older generation” for sure. —Mtume ya Salaam             Bad Brains or no brains?         If it's black music (broadly defined) I'm for sharing it and conversating about it; whether I like it is not the issue. Actually of all the tracks you selected, I like Ambersunshower the most and Loose Ends the least (but not by much — PM Dawn and KRS-One really give the Loose ones a run for the money as far as what song I don't care to ever hear again). When they are not being artsy-fartsy, it seems they are posing, acting out some image, which image could just be doing a commercial thing... I'ma stop. I just can't take any of this seriously. Bad Brains I'm ready for. Fishbone too. But these six selections! Like I said, NEXT!!! —Kalamu ya Salaam             The ponderance of life and existence          You never want to hear "Hangin' On A String" again? Wow. Don't even know how to respond to that. As for PM Dawn, I feel compelled to explain. "I'd Die Without You" is categorically unlistenable; I only posted it so that those who've never heard (of) PM Dawn might be treated to a small sampling of what so enraged Mr. Give Peace A Chance that he (KRS-One) felt it necessary to resort to physical violence. After sitting through a night's worth of that stuff I might have had to jump up there on stage to get in a few licks of my own. BTW, the complete title of PM Dawn's 1993 album is The Bliss Album...? (Vibrations Of Love And Anger And The Ponderance Of Life And Existence). The ponderance of life AND existence? Meaning, 'life' alone wasn't a wide-ranging and significant enough topic for one album? Instead of defining 'pretentious,' Webster's should just include a shot of that album title. How do you follow-up something as high-falutin' as that? I'll tell you how. You name your 1995 album Jesus Wept. Jesus wept? In other words, you have so high an opinion of yourself that you not only name your album after a Biblical verse (John 11:35, if you're following along at home), but also you superimpose a much larger-than-life image of yourself (because nothing less would suffice) gazing majestically over what appears to be, well, the entire frickin' cosmos. That's gotta be worth a smack upside the head, at least. —Mtume ya Salaam

This entry was posted on Sunday, July 24th, 2005 at 12:02 am and is filed under Contemporary. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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