***
(Virgin)
Review: Russell Baillie
With the arrival of a fourth album 11 years after the third, Scritti Politti must win some sort of prize for longest music career pauses for thought.
Having made some of the most delightfully pristine funky pop of the previous decade, finishing with 1988's Provision, Scritti's singer-songwriter Green Gartside
and his Lady Di haircut disappeared off the radar.
Seems he's just been biding his time and becoming - as the sound of this testifies - something of a hip-hop head. Which means that on Anomie and Bonhomie he's almost made a sample of himself, his Michael Jackson-like vocals often relegated to helium-powered incidental hooks as a roped-in posse of rappers, including Lee Majors and Mos Def, generally drag his songs into the street for a good seeing-to.
This makes for a sometimes intriguing sound, especially as it is propelled by a seriously groovy rhythm section helmed by bassist (and sometime vocal contributor) Me'Shell NdegeOcello. Which means this also rocks in Prince-funk fashion on The World You Understand is Over and Over and opener Umm. But it can get quite dull in there too, the mix of sophisticated pop breeziness and rap all rather uninvolving.
Gartside does deliver some immaculately upholstered ballads, as on First Goodbye, Born To Be, and the string-laden last track Brushed with Oil Dusted with Powder.
But while Gartside's reinvention offers much to admire for putting his pop craft through the hip-hop blender, it still doesn't quite answer the question: who needs it?
