I'm trying to be fair to Mr. Quaye, but his airy high tenor over a slow grooving reggae jazz is making my eyelids really heavy. Reggae is not my favorite genre, and that's me trying to be nice. I tend to find reggae to be a waste of time because it's soooooooo derivative. Thus far Finley Quaye has done little to mix things up. The first track has some weird psychedelic influences but is still pretty standard reggae.
Well now... "Sunday Shining" is an interesting blend of reggae with classic rock sounds and a bit of country twang. "Even After All" is light shoe-gaze fare. I'm starting to get a more free-form jazz feel from Maverick a Strike with deep Latin roots. I kinda wish this album were made 20 years earlier with crazy blaxploitation orchestration in place of the cheesy synthesized sound effects. I also wish this album could have been done without all the reggae genre cliches, like talking about war and being Rastafarian.
"The Way Of The Explosive" features a slow groove on electric bass that loops for nearly five minutes. I guess the title was meant to be ironic or something, because it never felt explosive in the slightest. I need a long nap.
I honestly feel bad because I couldn't finish this album in one sitting. I had to turn it off and take a break. I think that's kinda unfair, because somehow I made it through Devil Without A Cause without stopping. I must have been in a really bad mood when I started Maverick A Strike, because there's nothing wrong with the music. It is steeped in a genre I find boring, but I fucking HATE Kid Rock's genre.
Speaking of hip-hop, which isn't really Kid Rock's genre but whatever, "Supreme I Preme" has a beautiful haunting hip-hop backing track. Weird how Finley Quaye could take two genres a don't like, blend them together, and come up with a song that I kinda like. I lose a bit of respect for Mr. Quaye after listening to "Red Rolled And Seen" which is a 4-minute bit of instrumental reggae muzak. If that piece had been a minute long, maybe 90 seconds, it would have made a neat little interlude. Long instrumentals like this need some kind of melody to sustain them- a solo or something, not just the same soft pattern over and over.
Maverick a Strike has a lot of neat ideas and expands on the reggae sound quite a bit. I went back and forth between liking it and not liking it. So I'll be nice and give it 3 stars. If you like reggae I assume you'll like Finley Quaye, so check it out.
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