"Reckless with your love / you just give it up / fearless with your life / no one can you trust."
This had been kicking around my ipod for a few months before it occurred to me that it was not an ages-old forgotten house classic, but had only dropped this year. For a song performed in the well-worn archetype of a lover wronged, and using a flawlessly derivative vocal house template, Azari & III's "Reckless with your Love" is shockingly effective and compulsively listenable. It is a sophisticated performance from a vocalist with unusually firm, even radiant self-confidence. But it's not an "I Will Survive" or a "Good Luck," because it's not explicitly about overcoming heartbreak; it's not even about the self. Instead, it's about the other person, and the realization that you don't even have to move on because, in reality, you're the one who dodged a bullet here (whether or not the singer believes himself isn't entirely clear, it should be noted). It's a really enjoyably judgmental song, unashamed in its embrace of queer aesthetics but universal in its expressions of unconcealed disdain.
I also like it a lot more than the somewhat more celebrated (and perhaps musically more 'unique') "Hungry for the Power," a track that seems to imitate an outdated camp sensibility. It's also pretty good, but for some reason -- perfectly expressed by the mid-track rap that dates it almost immediately -- its cheesiness feels like a revivalist's dry performance of cheese. The feeling just isn't there; instead we're left to admire the accuracy and, one suspects, laugh at its source material. Its conflation of 'love' and 'power' is also too generic to feel particularly real, leaving the listener wanting more in the way of specifics. Without details -- how this 'power' is expressed -- it lacks personality.
And personality is ultimately what makes "Reckless" feel so timeless; the singer is precise in his judgment and confident in his resolve ("I get stronger every day") so it feels empowering without even a hint of corny, self-conscious sloganeering. Of course, the track would be unbearable if it didn't feel some sympathy for its subject. The singer's final judgment isn't really all that damning, his subject only guilty of loving people a little bit too readily. When you're the object of that kind of affection, who's gonna say no? This kind of cognitive dissonance perfectly describes my relationship with the song, which should be disdain for its dry revivalism, and is instead reckless attraction.
So Pitchfork's 200 Albums of the 2000s feature has begun. Both of my blurbs are in this first batch, so keep an eye out because I said some stuff about Scarface's The Fix and Common's Like Water For Chocolate, both pretty great albums. I'm glad that I got to write about The Fix in particular, acknowledging that it really isn't the best 'Face record of the last ten years without actually saying so explicitly.
I have a hot (piece of) iron in my heart
Its your love that tortures me
In my entire life I will have
A burden on my conscience
For (because of) the so many mistakes of mine
That turned you away from me
She left, she left, she left, I lost her
And I turn around, and I ask
And I have caught (taken) the streets
I wake up from my sleep and I ask for you
Now I understood how much I love you
In my entire life I will have
A burden on my conscience
For (because of) the so many mistakes of mine
That turned you away from me
It's funny, I really do enjoy parts of this album, and have since I first checked for it back in '02. But it's just not very good. You can read this review here.
I think a shortcoming of this review is that it does seem like I assumed Q-Tip had this specific artistic intent -- that he wanted to combine jazz & hip-hop in a meaningful way -- that isn't really there, that maybe he was more interested in creating some kind of weird polyglot soul record. I hope that wasn't his intention, though, because to me that's even less interesting.
