Lee “Scratch” Perry is the living embodiment of the notion that history would, on the whole, prefer its musical heroes to stop making music. If Perry had packed it in toward the end of the 1970s, leaving his 1977 collaboration with the Clash on “Complete Control” as his parting gift, he would be enshrined in legend as the man who helped invent dub reggae, pioneered the idea of the studio as instrument, and recorded Bob Marley. And he is remembered for all that. But as Perry continued to pump out the tunes—he has more than 50 albums to his name since 1980—he gradually mutated into a cartoonish character best known for his Delphic proclamations and penchant for wearing mirrors. Fans today come to him for his classic recordings and eccentric persona, but not so much his recent catalog.
In this, Perry resembles a pre-American Recordings Johnny Cash, another artist whose continued output in the 1980s did little good for his reputation. And if Rainford, Perry’s new album, isn’t quite the Cash-esque late-period renaissance that producer Adrian Sherwood has compared it to, it is at least somewhere in the same ballpark, thanks to the album’s sympathetic contemporary production and personal appeal.
You can best hear this newfound clarity on album standout “Autobiography of the Upsetter.” While recent Perry tracks, like Orb collaboration “Ball of Fire,” could be a lot of fun, you’d be hard pressed to divine what his rambling vocal lines were actually about. On “Autobiography of the Upsetter,” Perry plays things relatively straight, narrating his life story from childhood in 1930s Jamaica to his burgeoning musical career, only occasionally veering into the kind of free-associative babble that litters his more recent work. Perry’s vocal may not be particularly melodic, but there is something profoundly moving about hearing a musical legend who often seems at odds with the modern world relate tales of Bob Marley and his mythical Black Ark studio in a tone of guttural gravitas, while backing vocals lilt around him in a tender embrace.
Rainford is helped along by the instinctive production of longtime Perry collaborator and British dub pioneer Adrian Sherwood, whose work here balances classic reggae tropes—off-beat guitar chops, cavernous bass lines, and one-drop drums—with modern production touches and idiosyncratic effects, doing much of the melodic lifting along the way. “Cricket on the Moon” combines classic reggae lurch with an occasional digital stutter; “Let It Rain” offsets a dancehall beat with a string section that is slurred yet elegant; and “Makumba Rock” introduces Brazilian instrumentation to a rolling bassline.
For all Sherwood’s musical nous, though, the strength of the album is in collaboration, with Perry’s iconic vocal tone—a mixture of phlegmy rasp, biblical command, and childish wonder—giving life to Sherwood’s lolloping grooves, much as Johnny Cash’s funereal baritone anchored Rick Rubin’s minimalist production on American Recordings. The brilliance of “African Starship” lies in the interplay between the song’s rusting metallic skank and Perry’s sky-gazing humanity, while Perry’s melodic vocal is not enough to rescue the rather drab production on “Run Evil Spirit,” a song that outstays its welcome two minutes in.
Rainford is unlikely to rejuvenate Lee “Scratch” Perry’s career in the way American Recordings did for Johnny Cash. The songwriting is too inconsistent, and there are too many moments of musical flab. It’s also possible that Perry hasn’t fallen quite as far in the popular imagination as Cash had; his groundbreaking early work casts a long shadow that his more unfocused later years have’t dimmed. But Rainford marks a welcome return for an artist who for far too long had been rendered all but invisible behind his abstruse wit, esoteric demeanor, and all those mirrors.
