“Abed! Stop being meta, why do you always have to take whatever happens to us and shove it up its own ass?” is one of the more self aware lines in hit (or is it?) sitcom ‘Community’. Abed is capable of communication only through pop culture references which isolate and confuse other characters but wink so frequently at the viewer you begin to think there’s a coded message in there. This meta tendency, this sense of fun, this sense of earnestness runs deep through Adam ‘Kindness’ Bainbridge’s debut. All of Bowie’s babies’ tricks are here, Prince licks and Vangelis synths kiss in what’s a mesh and mess of Lethal Weapon and Midnight Caller soundtracks with all the cool of a well intentioned cyber-punk Miami Vice. It’s immature enough to read Vice but thinks better of spending $90 to import what is ultimately a white tee shirt, it once laughed at a fire bucket ashtray in Urban Outfitters but didn’t need to spend the £15 to prove how bad at consumption it was. This is a smart, knowing music, it is disposable pop yet knowingly steeped like a cliff in a library.
I’m often infuriated by artists who are Byronic and serious up until the water touches their arm bands and then ‘it’s just pop music, it’s meant to be fun’, the ultimate get out, the ‘but I’m on den’ excuse. World, You Need a Change of Mind came into my life via this preposterously good video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BI73NFINsyo A child which like the album that produced it is funny, biting, high concept, roughly refined, but sounds great, is enjoyable, has something to offer. It is an album which has it both ways, it is light and disposable yet faithful and generous in praise of what inspired it. Even the aching cool front portrait seems to be a simultaneous comment on fashion while also a homage to Songs from the Big Chair by Tears for Fears.
As an album it is patchy, with four or so tracks of such strength that the good grace that’s built up is carried over through. Cyan, Gee Up, That’s Alright and the blondest highlight, Swinging Party satisfy in such a way that you don’t mind that Gee Whiz is a pointless pre-amble and Bombastic is in the main, fucking awful (a sung/spoken list of influences is like an audio version of the liner notes from Endtroducing, and is as much fun as that sounds). When it works it is like Spaced, crafted so that if you got the reference you laughed but contained such humour that if you didn’t get the reference, you laughed, that’s how this album succeeds. I didn’t find out that Swinging Party was a cover until weeks after hearing this, the original is awful containing none of the forlorn cool of the Kindness version. Anyone Can Fall in Love is a cover of that Eastenders lady song, and you know what? It’s good, again you laugh but as the chorus of ‘Anyone can fall in love, that’s the easy part, you must keep in going’ drifts by you forgot who originally sang it and the tune and the hair and who she’s married to and the lyrics are carved with a vital, cutting freshness. It has it all ways.
This referential nature brings us to the sampling, there’s been much in the way of contradiction over whether this album is entirely sampled or not, it was produced by half of Cassius and Bainbridge is often described as a bed-room producer so it is certainly a possibility, but even then the samples seem cheeky, the bass in the beautiful reaching Cyan always reminds me of the bass from ABBA’s Gimme, Gimme, Gimme in an is it/isn’t it way. While the use of sampling not being mentioned in the press release infuriated one reviewer from a site, let’s call it ‘Srownedindound’ (I hope they never find out about rap/hip hop) it seems central to the point of this record and what Kindness are trying to do. If it hadn’t sampled Trouble Funk and interpolated a vocal hook from The Escorts (which Srownedindound couldn’t hear/hadn’t heard from their high horse so had no issue with that) then it wouldn’t make sense, it would be a misguided attempt at making popping slap bass and orchestra hit keys sound good again. Instead it is clever context, clever expression, all ‘tune’.
And that’s why I started with Community, Abed is oh so meta but is often the shows heart, the one showing so little emotion on the surface but requiring it deeper down, the one that needs to be independent but fit, the one who recontextualises and decontextualises the situation and the subject, the tongue in the cheek and the tear in the eye. You should watch Community and you should buy World, You Need a Change of Heart, neither of them are the best in their field, neither is perfect but both have seen me revisit some of the most fun I’ve had all year.
Adam Hiles
alltherecordsihear 