ALMAMEGRETTA

It's great when a band has the intelligence and ambition to conceive a recording as a unified whole rather than as a collection of songs. But this time Raiss and company talk a better game than they play. 4/4 is the most uneven and least cohesive recording they've released since their 1993 debut, Animamigrante.

4/4 isn't an unmitigated disaster. Some half-dozen tunes are as fine as anything they've done on their previous albums. And to be honest, each of their earlier releases had its share of weak tracks. There was too much filler on Animamigrante, some of the meandering ambient-dub numbers on Sanacore were failed experiments, and Lingo had a few embarrassing excursions into English-language rap. But none of their previous efforts had as many duds as 4/4.

Raiss has stated that whereas Almamegretta's previous recordings were more "underground," the new one is unabashedly pop. "We like to write pop songs," he says, "even if we have mainly played music that isn't at all pop. In our previous recordings we have upheld the underground component, to the point of excluding songs that didn't fit this genre."

There's nothing wrong with the band making a pop move. I don't expect them to forever remake "Figli di Annibale" or "Sud," as great as they were. The problem with 4/4 is that the band too often sacrifices its best and most distinctive qualities in pursuit of its crossover dreams. On their earlier recordings gli Alma synthesized southern Italian, middle eastern, African American and African Caribbean elements into a "contaminated" sound all their own. On 4/4 there's too little contaminazióne and too much imitazióne. And in some instances, the band mimics the worst of international pop trends.

4/4 is dedicated to Augustus Pablo, the late Jamaican reggae-dub musician and producer. Pablo crafted a unique and haunting sonic world set somewhere "east of the River Nile," as one of his best LPs was titled.

Almamegretta learned their lessons well from Pablo, as well as from British dub producer Adrian Sherwood. Reggae and dub make up about a fourth of 4/4 (the numerological wordplay is hard to avoid), and the Jamaican flavor is refreshing after its absence from Lingo. The reggae tracks lend welcome warmth and sensuality to a recording that too often sounds over-produced and ostentatious in its deployment of the latest recording studio technology.

"Oreminutiseconti," the first single from the CD, has the chief virtue of a good pop record - a catchy tune with a refrain that sticks in your head - but the band cleverly fucks with formula by laying a sampled string section over a base of electronica and reggae percussion.

"Venus," one of the CD's standout tracks, also is built on Jamaican "riddims" sweetened with strings. But the big surprise is Raiss' vocal. The man is singing better than ever, and here, switching between napolitano and inglese, and sounding as comfortable in the latter as in his native tongue, he wails the blues with more gritty soul than his paesano and sometime collaborator Pino Daniele.

4/4's opening track, "The cheap guru," isn't as successful. The dub effects are beautifully crafted but the piece is a victim of its unrealized ambitions, as well as of an Orientalist condescension that seems jarringly out of place with the band's multicultural stance. Raiss has said that the track represents "my opinion of the New Age." And that opinion, rendered in English, is this, in its entirety: "I have spent most of my life believing in the creed of a cheap guru." The snatches of pseudo-Indian music that serve as a sarcastic corollary to the lyric make one wonder, is it the fatuousness of new age spiritual bromides that's the target here, or Indian spirituality itself?

"O mmeglio d''a vita" effectively pairs Raiss' husky, "Figli di Annibale"-style rapping with his ethereal singing on the English chorus. "Alta fedeltŕ" seamlessly blends rock, reggae and hiphop. "Sempre," Blondie-esque surf-ska complete with cheesy organ fills, is pure pop ephemera, and a lot of fun.

But after "Sempre," the album falls apart. "Mbikili/Riboulez le kick" starts off promisingly, with three-plus minutes of thunderous percussion, before degenerating into an undistinguished techno workout that has Raiss chanting stupid stuff like "Riboulez le kick/Riboulez my dick." "Sahinko's blues" is six minutes of hiccuping sound effects by the eponymous Siberian vocalist. The nadir, however, is the final track, "Camisa Doce," which has guest rapper Dre Love threatening, "I'll pop your ass with my pistol/if I catch you messin' with my sister."

By the standards of U.S. rap, this isn't particularly hardcore. Still, it's dismaying that a band that has demonstrated such a singular vision and intelligence felt they had to import the worst element of American rap, its macho posturing and penchant for violence. Even worse, they seem to think this idiocy is cutting edge - the press materials for 4/4 tout Dre Love's "explicit lyrics" as one of the album's strong points.

In my review of Almamegretta's previous CD, Lingo, I observed that the recording captured the group's "end of the century peregrinations into new musical territory," and that I was eager "to see where these wandering souls go next." But 4/4, its high points notwithstanding, too often is a trip to destinations I don't intend to revisit.

George De Stefano (courtesy of the Italian Rap website)