Better Than Heavy/Better Than Dub (2009)
20 tracks, 75 minutes (2 CDs)
Spotify • iTunes
Mongrel was an interesting but short-lived project, a supergroup led by Jon McClure (him from Reverend and the Makers) with Andy Nicholson and Matt Helders (Arctic Monkeys), Drew McConnell (Babyshambles) and rapper Lowkey (then of Poisonous Poets). Their music was a marrying of indie rock and hip-hop, and in hindsight, it feels like they had a bit of a Gorillaz sort of thing going on with their sound. Setting them apart from Damon Albarn's lot though, Mongrel were explicitly political, calling out specific politicians and almost every track having some sort of heavy message attached.
Better Than Heavy was Mongrel’s only album, and they actually gave it away free as a covermount CD with The Independent newspaper. Considering free newspaper CDs were often quite naff, I was really impressed with this one. So impressed that I actually went out and paid money for it in the end: while the album itself was produced by Adrian Sherwood (On-U auteur, UK dub superstar and one of my favourite producers), the on-sale version came with an extra disc, Better Than Dub, which, as you may guess, was a set of dub remixes from Sherwood himself. I made a good choice too – I reckon that bonus disc is possibly better than the original. Sherwood really knows how to bend tracks into something completely different.
The album got roundly panned by the music media, but I don’t know. I get where the critics are coming from for most of it. A lot of the political themes and references throughout the album were dated even at the time of release, or else explained in a really naff, simplistic way. Perfect for a left-wing 18 year old, but ten years on, I can see how that can be grating. I think the whole thing would be better without Jon McClure. The music on the album is solid and Lowkey and the huge cast of guest MCs are great – and they even have Bassekou Kouyaté playing his ngoni here and there – and those are what makes the album enjoyable; McClure’s contributions are the bits you have to get through to enjoy the rest though.
Mongrel was really a project that I thought could have legs. It didn’t, as it turned out. McClure talked up a next album, touting collaborations with M.I.A. and Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez and saying “We're really taking a few people to task, kind of like we're Public Enemy or something.” Cringe. Not long after, Lowkey gave up music to study politics full-time, and the second album never materialised. Maybe it was for the best. But for all the harsh critics, Better Than Heavy and Better Than Dub are still good, if flawed, albums.
No comments:
Post a Comment