While many bands make albums as part of an ongoing, zeitgeist-adherence, expectation-delivering next step in a predictable journey, as Mortal Prophets, John Beckmann is everything opposed to such pedestrian creativity… if that isn’t too much of an oxymoron. It is more as if he sets up a distant sonic target, a genre, a theme, an idea, and then works out how to hit it; he is always heading for pastures new, making music to some degree, at tangents to what he has done before. Why would anyone who considers themselves truly creative do otherwise?
With Ain’t No Fool we find him digging down into the formative years of post-punk, that time when the still present punky swagger was being tempered by a more song-driven, accessible and infectious vibe, a time when the guitar was losing its dominance to electronic experimentation, when genres were mutating and spawing and where those art rock bands from the seminal punk scene of the LES finally found their context.
“I Am Your Lover” opens, a scratchy, jazz-mauled, Swordfishtrombones-esque slice of strangeness, setting the adventurous tone for what is to follow perfectly, and “In My Dreams” is a fractious blend of night-time, outsider pop with a suitably lucid dreamstate vibe. And while we will all recognize the title “Windmills of Your Mind,” here it is a tribute rather than a cover; the words are different yet echo the same theme and format, and the robotic groove feels both oddly familiar and wonderfully unhuman. Imagine if the theme from The Thomas Crown Affair had disappeared down an alternative timeline…the same one that Devo called home!
The title track is a trippy blend of restless basslines and kalidescopic sonics, spoken word and strange charm, “Just Us” is all about the bass groove in the same way that Talking Head’s Remain in Light was, although here feeling more industrial, as if it is the sound of the 80’s as interpreted by androids and “One of These Days” is a beguiling pop song looking for a more creative genre to call home.
As always, this album is a master stroke. Not merely because the music is so unique, and it is; not because it pushes boundaries, often ones that people stopped pushing years ago; nor because it takes the same sonic building blocks and elements available to everyone else and builds something totally new. Ain’t No Fool is a masterstroke because it can do all of that and still deliver the most accessible and intriguing songs you have ever heard.
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