David Axelrod is an odd character in popular music. There's really no bin to file him in, though he's had his paws in just about everything that's happened in popular music since his career began way back in the 1950s. In certain respects, he fits rather nicely next to other idiosyncratic figures of his heyday-- guys like Van Dyke Parks and Lee Hazlewood who kept up appearances by writing pop songs and producing other peoples' albums, all the while compiling their own personal back catalogs of bizarre, often unclassifiable music.
However, his music sits in a different realm, more removed from traditional concepts of songwriting and instrumentation, and vastly more indebted to jazz. This makes sense, as Axelrod served as producer to such notables as Cannonball Adderley and Stan Kenton. He's also responsible for much of Lou Rawls' mid-60s output, and the architect of the Electric Prunes' ultra-strange psychedelic Mass in F# Minor. If you own anything by DJ Shadow, Kid Koala, or any number of other modern turntable collagists, chances are you've heard at least a few snippets of Axelrod's own solo work. He even has a remixing credit himself on U.N.K.L.E.'s "Rabbit in Your Headlights" single.
His twelfth solo effort is a strange concoction of old and new that begs the listener to question when exactly it was recorded. This is partly because it was actually recorded in two completely different eras. The majority of the basic rhythm tracks for seven of the nine songs included here were recorded thirty years ago for an aborted project for Warner Brothers. Axelrod had actually completed the charts decades ago, but it wasn't until Mo'Wax became interested in the project at the close of the last century that any initiative was undertaken to finish the recordings.
The thirty-year-old acetates blend surprisingly well with the new sessions-- so well, in fact, that it's basically impossible to tell what's new and what's old. The things we know are new are the first and last tracks-- the album's only vocal songs. David Axelrod opens with cold, quivering strings strangely juxtaposed with James Hughart's fretless bass leads. What this gives way to, however, is much stranger.
Saxophones and bassoon creep into the mix, providing a strange, menacing undertow that sounds nearly medieval in character. Deepening the mood is a choir that sounds more like a group of untrained people singing in a church than a tight professional ensemble. The choir exits for the entrance of West Coast rapper Ras Kass, who plows through some impressive verses of beatless orchestral hip-hop before Lanny Morgan's jazzy alto sax solo seizes the spotlight. Kass returns stronger than ever in Morgan's wake, though, spouting lines like, "And your judges will all have work/ And your lawyers will flap their tongues/ And all your jail guards and cops/ Will be the fathers to your young." He laughingly tosses off the final line, "Auction off your future."
This startling beginning is a pretty good indicator of what the rest of the record sounds like over the course of its too-brief 35 minute span. "Jimmy T" begins with Howard Roberts' freakish guitar lead before slipping into some sort of quasi-soul groove provided by L.A. studio legends Carol Kaye (bass), Lou Morell (guitar) and Earl Palmer (drums). Bob Efford offers an impressive baritone sax solo, and if you were curious, Joe Sample's the guy at the organ. Dissonant strings cut like shards through the bottom of the mix, and the overall result is unlike anything I've ever heard.
"Crystal Ball" follows with a somewhat more identifiable Phil Spector vibe, but that doesn't fully explain what it sounds like. Strings flutter in the wings, horns blare in from every direction, the guitars sound like they wandered away from a James Brown album, and the bass almost sounds lifted from Pet Sounds.
This leaves us with the singularly pretty "Fantasy for Ralph." Ernie Watt's soprano sax solo is so unaffected and unpretentious that it ends up conveying a beauty very much unlike what we conventionally think of as "pretty" in modern music. The flutes and other window dressing that introduce the track somehow manage to transcend the schmaltzy connotation that such an arrangement would usually have, and the overall effect is far more current sounding than it probably should be.
"The Dr. and the Diamond" and "Big B Plus" continue down this same richly textured and wildly eccentric path, with the latter sounding something like a cross between a parade, a string quartet and a hive of bees. Flutes flutter constantly on the edges of the song, giving the proceedings a frenzied, nervous feel as the drums and horns clamor away underneath, only to have the whole affair interrupted by melting cellos and violins. "For Land's Sake" travels to a Southern revival for a bit of gospel, albeit gospel polluted by any number of other bastard elements that are awfully difficult to pin down. Then comes the moody "The Shadow Knows," an oddly hip-hopish track (remember, those drums were recorded thirty years ago) laced with traces of Peter Thomas' "Space Patrol" scores and endowed with more of Howard Roberts' utterly bizarre guitar leads.
David Axelrod closes on a powerful note with "Loved Boy," dedicated to his deceased son Terry. Lou Rawls infuses the simple lyrics with an intense passion that almost makes it sound as though it's his own son that was lost. Oscar Brashear's clarion trumpet lines do their best to hold Rawls together with their conversational tones, but he owns the song, seemingly dragging the arrangement along with him as though it were the very burden of grief. The orchestra sounds broken, chugging along with a sense of duty to the recording, but never slipping into gear. The result is so devastatingly sad and desolate that it's difficult to imagine a weirder or more appropriate homage to a departed loved one.
David Axelrod has created an utterly unique recording with his twelfth album-- one that sounds neither dated, nor of its time. Rather, it exists in that world of albums that really have no time-- albums like Scott Walker's Tilt or Joni Mitchell's Mingus. It even comes with unique packaging, strangely wrapped in a cardboard slip case and inner artwork that resembles a little starship. It's hard to say who exactly would like this album, but it's nearly impossible for me not to recommend it. If you have a taste for something new and a desire to hear an album whose effect will likely never be approximated anywhere else, I urge you to give this one a spin.
