Search - Terry Hall, Mushtaq :: The Hour of Two Lights

An entertaining experiment that works . . .

aliled | Shawnee, Kansas United States | 09/17/2003

(5 out of 5 stars)

"Most of you will know Terry Hall as a sort of journeyman songwriter / performer who first came to public attention with the Specials and later as a member of Fun Boy Three, the Colourfield and numerous other combos. Mushtaq is from the UK band Fun-Da-Mental and much less known to me. In any case, they've created a stellar work which rests entirely on its own merits. Aside from lyrics and a listing of participants, there's not much information on what this is Supposed To Be. One newspaper article claims the album features "a 12-year-old Lebanese girl singer, a blind Algerian rapper, a Syrian flautist, Hebrew vocalists, a group of Polish Gypsies and Damon Albarn". Sounds about right, even if Albarn is the only one I can absolutely confirm.



What's startling about this album isn't simply the songs (which are energetic, enthusiastically played and well-written) but the perfect way in which they flow and how the wildly divergent stylistic differences between them don't detract from the album's cohesiveness. There are songs which are identifiably "Iranian", "Jewish" and "Gypsy", and plenty of others which you'd describe as ethnic even if you can't figure out the particulars. It's tough to describe exactly what this all sounds like, but the closest comparison is to those wonderfully ambient songs that the Specials made shortly before Hall's departure - songs like "Ghost Town", "Stereotypes" and "International Jet Set". This is sort of ironic, as Hall wrote none of those, but there you have it. (One song in particular, "This And That" has an odd backing vocal part that is so reminiscent of the eerie chattery backing vocal that occurs about a minute into "Ghost Town" that there's no way it can be a coincidence.) The album is similarly infused with a political undertone like that of much of the Specials' later work. Though the lyrics are somewhat oblique, this seems purposeful - the songs relate easily to both the variety of struggles throughout the Middle East and to a sort of claustrophobic urban alienation in the West.



Hall has a propensity to wander musically, but I'm hopeful that his partnership with Mushtaq will continue. About the only thing that this album lacks is one absolute monster track a la "Ghost Town" which transcends the time and place it was made. It definitely feels like it's around the corner though, so let's hope that we see another album in a year or so.



Damon Albarn deserves some credit for all this too, I suspect. In addition to playing on the record, it's his label (Honest Jons) that released the album in the UK (it's through Astralwerks here in the US), and in addition to working with Hall for several years now, he's the one Britpop-era artist who's really gone on to have a valid, interesting career. His "Mali Music" is an interesting foil to this album, and Honest Jons have several other great records available, all of which go beyond what we've any right to expect from "pop" music in the 21st Century."

An excellent fusion of East and West

James C. Martin | Fargo, ND | 01/31/2004

(5 out of 5 stars)

"This albulm is so hypnotic that you'll not want to put it away. It pulls you in with lyrical strength and beautiful melodies. I heartily recommend it."