I popped the new disc into my CD player with high hopes - previous releases have consistently blown my mind. Fresh! Energetic! Groundbreaking! Rusted Root!
Um, no. It's my review, and I'll cry if I want to. The new album sucks.
They could have saved me the 47 minutes it took to listen to the CD and themselves the hassle of studio work, if they had just replaced the whole thing with one really wet-sounding "ker-plunk." That's all you really need in order to get the main point of "Welcome To My Party."
The first track begins with a deliberately off-key phrase sung into a deliberately ratty microphone - you know, one of those little bits crafted specifically in order to whet our appetites a little before the "real" song kicks in a few seconds later. Long after the first track had come and gone, however, I was still waiting for the "real" songs to start. The album starts out deliberately crappy, and it doesn't improve much after that.
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The riffs that kick in after the aforementioned cacophony sound more like a funkafied Dave Matthews than anything you'd expect from Rusted Root.
Personally, I don't think Dave has much to offer as far as funk goes, and that's sure as hell not what I'm looking for when I listen to these guys. Soon enough, the rest of the songs line up, clamoring to crush your hopes. They all sound like weak imitations of something else, and none of them have the juice that initially set Rusted Root apart.
"Weave" sounds like Macy Gray. "Sweet Mary" sounds like Peter, Paul and Mary. "Hands Are Law" sounds like the Gin Blossoms. "Women Got My Money" sounds like Tupac. Okay, not really. That title still cracks me up, though.
Instrumentally, the band has retreated. The signature Rusted Root sound was once a cross between mariachi and habanero. Though the Root was usually much darker, the ubiquitous comparisons to Santana were not without merit. Now the music sounds more like Everclear with nacho cheese. Who could have predicted that the band would ever become this predictable? Gone are the simple yet frantic guitar melodies, the driving drum parts and, most regrettably, the shivering vocals.
Considering these ridiculous backing tracks, the only one who could have possibly saved the album was lead singer Michael Glabicki. Even amid the phenomenally designed guitar parts and refreshing Latin and African percussion of earlier releases, he has always stood head and shoulders above the rest as the luminous centerpiece of the band. Unlike many of his contemporaries, who sing in fraudulent tortured whispers about one girl or another, Glabicki used to display a remarkable tendency to forgo message for music. He'd first infuse his voice with a vibrato fast enough to suggest an epileptic seizure, then he'd turn it loose over the chorus like a little rubber bouncy ball flung down a narrow hallway. Intelligibility of song lyrics was often compromised and sometimes recklessly flung out the window in favor of sonic integrity.
Unfortunately, Glabicki absolutely fails to deliver here. There are very slight touches of vocal bungee cords on tracks like "Artificial Winter" and "Blue Diamonds," but it hardly matters - those songs aren't particularly well written to begin with. Glabicki is quite good at singing like a fool, but he doesn't do so here, and his band seems to have become impotent. There's not much left.
The one exception to all of this is the title track. It might take a few more passive listens than usual for this one to register, but it's worth the extra attempts if you have the patience or are a Root fan desperately hoping to find something on this album that doesn't make you want to slam your head into your stereo in the hopes that at least one of them will crack. As an added bonus, it's diametrically opposed to the repetitively grating "Cry" on the track listing, so if you hover around this one you won't have to put up with much of Glabicki's whining.
Don't bother with "Welcome To My Party." Just send it on its way. Welcome to my trash can, sucka.
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