She Won’t Be Your Kept Woman , but she’ll be your man
By SAM PFEIFLE | September 25, 2008
SUBTLE, FOR ONCE: Miss Fairchild. |
In case you’ve been itching for some new Miss Fairchild lovin’, as we’re just over a year since Ooh La La Sha Sha, you’re in luck with the four-song digital-only EP Won’t Be Your Kept Woman, available September 30. It’s four songs of all the danceable R&B funk you’ve come to love, though slightly subtler and more graceful in its ass-shakingly enchanting ways.
Wrall Skillz still delivers his lines in a playful tenor, but the lyrics are more nuanced here, with less embrace of the cliché and a better ear for the original rhyme: “It’s clear and plain your conscience blurred/Your wrongs have left me undeterred” (“I Heard”). And Sammy Bananas (once p.nice) has a lighter touch on the production and drum sequencing, doing more with less and keeping things more organic, with lots of handclaps and gang choruses where you might have previously heard beeps and boops and vocal distortion.
The Great Dunlap’s flute is less featured, too, which is fine, in favor of his guitar and organ washes. “My Turn” is as much P-Funk as they’ve ever been, nearly psychedelic, with gritty bass from Patrick Johnson in a guest turn and saxophone pops from a variety of sources. The lyrics follow the lead, getting nearly metaphysical — “Some days right away you open your eyes and see things as they is/And some days I can see you’re already wise, you can see right through your lids” — and finishing in early hip-hop incite-to-rap crowd interaction.
All in all, they’re having slightly less fun, but making better music, and the listener is rewarded with the better of both worlds.
Won’t Be Your Kept Woman | Released by Miss Fairchild | at the Maine Roller Derby bout and after-party | Portland Expo + Big Easy | September 27 | www.missfairchild.com
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Topics:
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