Daniel Lanois is primarily a producer, but what he's always wanted to do is perform. Known for twiddling nobs for U2, Bob Dylan, Peter Gabriel, Emmylou Harris, and even Willie Nelson, Lanois has always appeared to want out of the constricted control room and onto the open stage, and over the past two decades, he has made a handful of albums full of low-key singer-songwriter fare as well as numerous ambient-oriented collaborations with Brain Eno. Needless to say, these records sound great, but they don't always hold up extremely well. Like Quentin Tarantino delivering a dramatic line reading, Lanois's considerable talents are weakest when it comes to composition. Inspired by a trip to Mexico, Belladonna sounds technically flawless-- every marimba strike and fret run has a specific texture that's almost miniaturist in its realistic detail-- but it's all in service to vocal-less songs that are ponderous and dull, whose strict adherence to an overriding motif hems them in.
Belladonna refers to the herb Atropa belladonna, or deadly nightshade, whose poison results in, among other symptoms, total loss of voice-- which makes it a particularly apt title for an album of instrumentals. The overall scheme is almost soundtrack-like in nature, or rather like a nature soundtrack. Rumbling feedback on opener "Two Worlds" suggests storms on the horizon, time-delay shots of clouds morphing rapidly past-- New Agey mood scenes conveying the passage of time or the amorality of an arid desert floor. The songs that follow take a similar tack, and song titles refer to south-of-the-border locales or fauna -- "Oaxaca", "Agave", "Desert Rose", "Todos Santos" -- giving specificity to the vague evocations of the music. For better or worse, such earthly signposts work to ground the music's spacey ambience.
Lanois communicates this ethereality mostly through his pedal steel, which recalls Apollo: Atmospheres and Soundtracks, his 1983 collaboration with Eno. Lanois manages to coax some lovely textures and melodies out of the instrument, as on the florid notes of "Desert Rose" and "Carla", but typically it gets lost among the other elements, proving the least compelling element on the album. As a result, the songs often fold into one another, distinguishable only by inspired flourishes like the reggae rhythms of "Frozen", the Mariachi horns on "Agave" and Brad Mehldau's sparkling keyboard melodies on "Sketches". Lanois is aiming for a kind of ascetic aesthetic, with each song a sort of musical haiku: concise, disciplined, sublime. But on Belladonna less is not more, but merely much less. The album is so stuffy and self-serious that it practically demands your respect and admiration. However, it rarely commands your attention, so it doesn't reward much of anything.
