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Brazzaville, "East L.A. Breeze"
Brazzaville's latest work is an album of immediately accessible pop songs with little or no envelope pushing or edginess. Although they are not particularly groundbreaking, many of these songs are pleasurable just for the simple fact that they're so well done. While the album is a little broad for my taste, I still have to respect the high level of polish and craft at work here.
Most of the tracks are sunny and light pop songs interspersed with occasional forays into sappy and sentimental territory. The best of them are mellow soundtracks to sitting around a pool and drinking margaritas, but a few have a little more bite. My favorite is "Star Called Sun" because of its infectious rhythm, tight arrangement, and subtle keyboard fuzz. A nice arrangement transforms "Jesse James" from a wistful ballad into a punchy rock song. "Mr. Suicide" is also pretty good, this time with otherworldly keyboards providing the melody. "Ugly Babylon" has a similar feel but is driven by a slithering bass line.
Some of the slower songs hinder the album with their gentle longings, sweet talk, and lackadaisical bliss. A couple of the songs in this style, like "Bosphorus" and "Taksim," are decent contrasts to the rest of the material, but after a while they clutter the album. Some, like the title track, "Madelena," and "Lena," are simply momentum killers. Then there are a handful of songs that are merely ordinary. I hesitate to call them generic because most of them are well-written and have nice arrangements even if they’re not terribly memorable.
Because lesser groups have made careers out of worse material, it would be a disservice to Brazzaville to dismiss them out of hand without acknowledging how catchy some of these songs are. I prefer the more energetic songs overall, and it is a shame that there aren’t more of them.
