Disco de Scritti Politti: “Provision”

Since I first heard Boom! There She Was in a club, I've been using this Provision CD almost medicinally at times. Grey day? Traffic jam on a long commute home? Wanna wake up the kids on Saturday morning with musical sherbet for breakfast? Pop in this CD and turn up the volume.

I find the harmonies and the trademark synth pop organ sound on this CD absolutely refreshing. Not to mention the incredible mastering - every drum pops and every baseline throbs. The music jumps out of the speakers.

If you like synth pop, this is a sure shot.

Provision drags a little on Bam Salute, and Best Thing Ever and Philosophy Now are fun, but not quite peak material. However, the first four songs and Oh, Patti are so heartbreakingly beautiful that listening to them in succession has taken on a ritualistic position in my life. Boom! is a giddy, hyper-synchopated rush of elation. Eminently danceable. Overnite can make you cry. Perhaps the most yearning song I've ever heard. Absolutely gorgeous. Lovesick is like a second dose of Boom!. All That We Are is heavenly and lyrically a complete mind bender. Oh, Patti is a dreamy-eyed classic and Sugar and Spice is a guilty pleasure if there ever was one. I bought Provision on vinyl before I had heard a note of any Scritti stuff. I'd seen the Scritti name mentioned alongside other abrassive post-punk bands like Joy Division, which I was listening to at the time. The first spin made me feel completely embarassed, sitting alone in my room. The cutesy pie tunes and wimpy singing was the last thing I thought I wanted to hear. But I kept coming back. It was the tunes, full of strange chord changes and bouncy beats that first hooked me. I wasn't sold on it as a masterpiece until a rather focused session with the headphones on. Every sound is sculpted and polished for infinite nuance. Green's disembodied voice seems to be speaking directly to you from a different realm of cryptic wordplay and robotic longing. No lyric should be taken at face value, and every sound should be savoured at length. It is a singular creative statement, unique as the mind that realized. If you can get a copy with World Come Back To Life (a masterpiece of its own), you will be holding your new favorite record. Cupid and Psyche is essentially perfect, but it lacks a certain strangeness and obscurity that defines Provision. Listen closely, and most important, listen again.

This is one of those rare albums that pulls you out of that 'BLUE FUNK' we all feel from time to time. I keep this CD in my car for the inevitable traffic jam and the unavoidable Monday morning commute. From the powerhouse "Boom! There she was" to the airy almost dream quality of "Oh Patti" this CD delivers emotional salvation. I recommend this wholeheartedly and it can not be deteceted on a drug test either.

It's weird -- Green Gartside hates this album, ostensibly because it was difficult to make and not a commercial success, the fallout of which sent him into seclusion for eight or nine years. It certainly isn't quite as thrilling as "Cupid & Pysche 85," but it does have some high points, notably "Boom! There She Was" and "Sugar and Spice," both featuring the amazing Vocoder work of the late Roger Troutman. It is a very self-conscious record, very pretty-pretty. I liked it more in '88 than I do now, but anything by Green and company is worth buying -- so buy it.

I am not a big 1980s synth pop fan--my teenage years but that is a WHOLE other story--but being a music man, I never wholesale dismiss a genre.

So the critera I use for this music is, if hearing it played by a guitar or panio rock band, would it work

Well, Scriti Politi's songs absolutely would, using any instrumental treatment. Grant Garsdale is such a great writer, the songs have a beautiful, subtle, sophitacation. Some artists flash comeplexity. Garsdale, like the Beatles, hide great art in the guise of pop songs.

No further evidence than Provision is needed. This is pop, but pop with nice, subtle changes: tracks that may not hit the gut right away. But flowing with repeated listens, the music works on the heart AND head.

This is ear candy, but with lots of nutriants: these songs have a lot going on under the gleem, and when you take the time to listen a few times, these hidden hooks grab and don't let go. The synth treatment actually serves the music: the shine increases the attractions to Garsdales amazing melodic instints.