WHITE BREAD BLACK BEER - SCRITTI POLITTI
Green Gartside, aka Scritti Politti, is such a musical chameleon that he’s hard to follow, though his release schedule has included gaps of 11 and now seven years between new albums. The band’s U.K. punk-era beginnings mutated into synth-pop perfection in the ’80s. After a long hiatus, 1999’s “Anomie & Bonhomie” blended hip-hop with Gartside’s fluffy vocal harmonies. Now we get 14 tracks recorded solo in Gartside’s Wales apartment; perhaps the first pure Scritti Politti album. “The Boom Boom Bap” is a smoothly textured ode to Gartside’s beloved hip-hop, but its sparse arrangement is a better hint of what’s to come. Gartside gets playful with melody and structure, resulting in such variegated efforts as “Robin Hood” and the haunting epic “Dr. Abernathy.” The chameleon has come home and still sounds like no one else. Billboard
