Concrete Blonde - Group Therapy
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Music CD Cover
Artist: Concrete BlondeEdition: Music CD
CD Release Date: 2002-01-15
Music Label: Manifesto Records
Soundtracks:
- Roxy
- Violent
- When I Was A Fool
- True, Part III
- Tonight
- Valentine
- Your Llorona
- Take Me Home
- Inside/Outside
- Fried
- Angel
- Memory
Free Music Notes for Group Therapy
Free Music Review: Music to slit your wrists by?
Hit: 5 Stars
I bought this c.d. out of a lingering sense of loyalty to a band that I once enjoyed tremendously. I was sad when they broke up. I was nostalgically pleased when they got back together. But I have to admit that I wasn't expecting that much. In my general experience, bands split when they run out of stuff to say, and they get back together because they miss the moolah, not because they suddenly found new material. I would have been satisfied with a few good songs on this disc. Instead, I got a really solid album that's a, um, bit of a downer.
The album is riddled with nostalgia, longing and an awareness of the pending end. This always introspective group is digging deep into the territory of grief-expert Kubler-Ross. There are tributes to the glory days of other musicians (David Bowie-"all the young dudes" and Rod Stewart-"maggie may") and their own ("I know you liked me better then"). There's a teary-eyed nod to the Roxy and what reads like a lament for lost good-ol' days (in Violent, where "nothing seems to mean what it meant"). There's what seems to me an element of lash-back anger towards the accouterments of celebrity in Valentine, essentially a threat-song from a steel-spined goth queen who seems contemptuous of at least the chroniclers of celebrity. There's the "life is lonely" lost connections, lost love, last calls, last chances of the Latino-tinged Llorona and the superior boozer Take Me Home. Then there is the "ubi sunt"-the "those days are gone," the time-is-ending, end-is-near, days-are-passing songs, like True Part III ("& when / I leave this life / what will you say of me / you who never knew my heart?") and the finale, Memory.
If I had to pin `em to a mood, I'd say it's overall one of bittersweet acceptance. In spite of the wistfulness of When I Was a Fool, for instance, and the awareness of lost chances ("do I surrender & give up my dream / for a brick in the wall & a washing machine"), the song's ultimate message is a strong one: "still, I'd rather be me / than anyone else."
The album seems to intermingle hope and despair, most graphically on the song Angel, made menacing, mocking and tender by lead-singer Johnette Napolitano's razorwire whisper and sardonic laugh. Musicially, it is largely lacking the kind of hooks that make good radio play with a possible exception on Fried, a rap-rock-rage song that could use a little more of the old Concrete Blonde energy, ala Jesus, Please Forgive Me (For the Things I Am About to Say) and a definite exception on Tonight, a relatively upbeat and poppy song that is as short on meaningful lyrics as it is long on sound.
But the album is a cohesive, coherent whole, a melodic soundtrack for an evening with a bottle of whisky and a few old friends, or, anyway, very good inspiration for a bout of bittersweet introspection.
I recommend.
Group Therapy Poster
'Group Therapy' features 12 new recordings from all original members Johnette Napolitano, Jim Mankey, and Harry Rushakoff. This is their first new album in 7 years, since 1994's 'Mexican Moon'. Manifesto Records.Practice is said to make perfect, but perspective is arguably just as important. Group Therapy, Concrete Blonde's first new record after an eight-year hiatus, shows that original band members Johnette Napolitano, Jim Mankey, and Harry Rushakoff have gained some of just that. They've stepped out of the shadow of the Pretenders and shrugged off the Goth overtones that characterized their last commercially successful record (1990's Bloodletting), and have found that the balance between stylizing and emulating comes from putting personality--not posturing--first. Group Therapy opens with the radio single "Roxy," a tribute in form and content to Eno-era Roxy Music. With a pastiche of lyrics delivered in Napolitano's strong, throaty voice, the song sets the stage for a dozen tracks ranging in style from adult-oriented rock tunes to truck-stop country ballads to angry rock ragers about growing up and getting real. Though they occasionally read like high school poetry, the lyrics are redeemed by the sincerity of the band's performance. Group Therapy is dynamic and accessible enough to gain the band new listeners while giving old fans the sort of exciting Concrete Blonde music they've waited for since Bloodletting. --Sarah A. Sternau
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