“The first time I heard “Super Stupid” by Funkadelic off of Maggot Brain was when I realized what rock and roll was supposed to sound like. When I listen to it now, I realize I still have no concept of what rock and roll is or is supposed to be. It’s a koan. A super, stupid koan, mind you, but one nonetheless.”
“The album is great. Flawed, but great. The title track has Eddie Hazel living out the Homeric journey within the Aeneid-like expanses of his mind, coming forthright to the base of the mountain and—facing the Phaedrus-esque horns—decides to split the Over/Around conundrum by simply playing guitar to the mountain, Old Testament style.
The groove in “Wars of Armageddon” is (to say nothing of the auditory gymnastics used in mixing that song) the battle cry from whence the Civil Rights did not come from, but came on: “More Power to the People; More Pussy to the Power.” On that track as well as “Hit It and Quit It,” Ramon ‘Tiki’ Fulwood is doing circles around the downbeat, only to close out the whole cricket and bull’s-eye at the end of every phrase. Please.
In the album you hear the influences of The Coasters and Hendrix, the subsequent impetus and tendrils of Prince, Outkast. The sassiest background vocals ever. The decree by Dr. Funkenstein himself, George Clinton, that Funkadelic is in fact the Third Father to Mother Earth, Maury Povich style.
New Skin for the Old Ceremony is easily the most golden of the albums released by Leonard Cohen in the first leg of his career. Not golden in the pastoral, ephemeral sense, but in the solid, simple, decadent way. The Royal Family of a deck of Cohen-cards are all present—his rabid aesthetic sensibility—however the Jack is of the One Eye’d variety and he’s got it trained on the Queen, who’s headdress is torn, her sleeves green, and is known to give excellent head.
Present in the vocal delivery is an unhinged element that, while having presented itself in a more raw, smug form before (see: “Diamonds In the Mine” from Songs of Love and Hate), has yet to show itself this consistently in his oeuvre before; less complicated, more guttural. On certain songs, he straight dips out of rhyming patterns. He all together ignores enjambment. You believe his yelping at the end of “Leaving Green Sleeves”…as much as you could believe any expression of pain and sorrow from a Canadian.
Musically, New Skin…lacks the classic arpeggiated finger picking, the stripped-naked evocation before God/Woman that LC is so known for, and instead occupies a perfect middle ground between the folkier starting point and the synthesizers to which he would soon slither. John Lissaver is to be acknowledged here for his role in producing the album. A trained-but-young arranger, he allowed for a sparsely-ornate orchestration to manifest itself judiciously and prudently, the pallette of which I would come to end up recognizing in the more lush, mature work of Jean-Claude Vannier, David Axelrod, et al.
The guitar is still closely mic’d, the cigarettes are still smoked, and love is still made. Yet for all its passion and experience, New Skin for the Old Ceremony is couched in a deep detachment, the balance of those two never being quite as gracefully struck again until his album Old Ideas 38 years later. To me, that is how you can write the political (“Field Commander Cohen”), the poetic (“Take This Longing”), and, of course, the fallacious (“Chelsea Hotel #2″) in one album.”
—Richard Harper, drums
Fly Golden Eagle’s new album Quartz Bijou is in stores now.
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PHOTO: SEMI SONG
