Winston's Zen

The Beats – Sept 15th Download only / Sept 29th 2008 CD & 7”

This review is part of an ongoing collaboration with online music community AltSounds. My thanks to them for providing the review material. You can find the original article here.

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In truth, expectations for this release have not been the highest. It’s seems a long time now since Original Pirate Material redefined an entire genre, and it’s hard to shake the feeling that today’s Mike Skinner is a man at odds with himself.

Earlier this year it was widely reported that the Brit-hop maestro had scrapped nearly every track recorded for the The Streets fourth LP, bemoaning a “preachy” tone to the new material and starting over again. More recent reports that Skinner claims to have become “fucking sick” of The Streets and everything the name implies, have also failed to inspire confidence in his latest work, but will have come as little surprise to anyone who heard 2006’s The Hardest Way To Make An Easy Living. Skinner has himself described his third album as a “disturbing work”. Listeners and reviewers, however were often less romanticised in their descriptions of a record which seemed largely to deal with the tiring tribulations of fame. You know the ones; it’s too easy to get girls, no-one will disagree with you, you can’t do a line of coke without someone snapping a photo, that kind of thing. It’s tough, you know?

So it comes as a bit of a surprise then, that this single is actually very good.

Lyrically less brash and rhythmically less rampant than his earlier work, this change in vibe reflects the change in subject matter perfectly. This is no longer the booze, drugs and girls Skinner of old. These are the more poignant thoughts of a more mature lyricist, ready to move on and wondering if he’ll be able to do so happily. The sweetly looped sample, nagging hook, and candid observations are however, reminiscent of the brilliance that made Original Pirate Material ones of the most innovative debuts for decades, and secured the remarkably intelligent conceptual follow-up A Grand Don’t Come For Free a huge following.

On this evidence The Streets fourth, and apparently penultimate LP could turn out to be a true return to form.

Reviewed by WINSTON’S ZEN for Alt Sounds

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You check out the video to the single below, and so long as you're not one of those people who worried about giving 'them' your email address, then you can get your hands on album track The Escapist here for absolutely nothing.


Back soon,
Winston

Links:
Everything is Borrowed - Download NOW from 7digital
Preorder Everything is Borrowed from Amazon
The Streets Homepage
The Streets on MySpace
Listen to The Streets on Last.fm
The Beats