Hoodoo
Alison Moyet
1991: Sony 47841
Almost perfect. A kick-ass album of hot dark pain alternately exploding in exasperation and commenting in disbelieving detachment on what has gone down. The opening track and its followup are two smackdown examples of the former, but a few of the songs cross back and forth over the line between those descriptions. I’ve been listening to this album since 1992 and *still* don’t know what “My Right A•R•M” is about, but I like it. “Never Too Late” has such a lovely sound and lovely imagist snippets in its lyrics that I don’t even mind its unimaginative structure and occasional clichés. The title track is an eternal enigma, compelling, funky, grooving, slipping almost sneeringly out of the grasp of understanding every few phrases, and Alison’s evidently delivering us a palimpsest of bitter dishes heaped on one steaming little plate, mixing the angelic and the nefarious with deft little flicks of her wrists. And after all these years, when she rips through “(Meeting With My) Main Man” I *still* stop whatever I’m doing and just stare at the stereo, it’s so manic and sweltering! The album’s closing track, however, is as weak a choice as was Olivia Newton-John’s “Dolphin Song” closing her otherwise almost equally perfect Physical.
Comments © 2005 Mark Ellis Walker, except as noted, and no claim is made to the images and quoted lyrics.