The Untouchables - Wild Child
#10
January 1 1985
The Untouchables
Wild Child
Genre: Rocksteady/Ska
3.75 out of 5
Highlights:
Wild Child
I Spy (For the FBI)
Free Yourself
City Gent
There was some debate about including this. I relented. I shouldn't have. Our mandate (self-imposed) it music in the rock idiom. While you could debate that ska is an outgrowth of rock, this is a step further down the road.
So, let's examine this.
I agree that "Wild Child" and "I Spy (for the FBI)" and "Free Yourself" are terrific tracks. I love them. I always have. They could have been performed by Otis Day & the Knights. IOW, they are really stellar R&B tracks. Hell, they are the kind of songs the Blue Brothers would have recorded. But, is that rock? Next up is "Freak in the Streets" which is Rap with an R&B backing track. And it's also kind of bad.
I have been lobbied that, well, it is a "Ska" record. But tracks like "What's Gone Wrong" and "Lasershow" are straight up reggae. Speed em up and, yes, might be Ska. But The Specials this isn't. Only later, on "Mandingo" do we get a taste of Ska but, to be truthful, Sublime's style of this is better than that song.
Only "City Gent" gets close to what I would call Ska.
So, how to review this? R&B isn't my wheelhouse and these are jams not songs.
The hit tracks are great and will get any party going, for sure. The rest are middling R&B jams and if we included Soul and R&B this list would be 2000 albums (and I would be woefully unqualified to rate and review them) and what little Ska there is is too little too late.
https://itunes.apple.com/us/album/wild-child/1365524968
No comments:
Post a Comment