Citizen Cope - The Clarence Greenwood Recordings

His new album throws whatever promise I may have fostered for Citizen Cope in the trash.

So I’m assuming the way new trends of music get invented is that in the 5(?) major record labels, they have this random word association machine that throws out new genres, and then they go sign groups from them. “scream + emo = screamo!” “rap + rock = …crap” or, in Citizen Cope’s case “R&B + singer/songwriter.” Hey, why not? Why not take the soul of rap and R&B and inject it into the white-bread singer songwriter realm? Why not give it both a heart and a political conscience? It would be a creative spin on what some would argue is a stale genre. Why not? Well, because then albums like The Clarence Greenwood Recordings happen.

For the combination to work, you would need an artist with vision, charisma, intelligence, creativity, and lyrical prowess, and this artist, sadly enough is not Clarence Greenwood, a.k.a Citizen Cope. His self titled debut showed signs of greatness in songs like “Let the Drummer Kick It,” which, despite being nothing more than a laundry list of problems facing the world, was propelled by a solid two-note piano line and a steady danceable beat. Even more impressive was “Salvation,” the solemn, stripped down, tale of Cope’s struggle to lead a genuinely good life. Though the topic is both borderline religious and highly clichéd, in Salvation the words and sparse acoustic arrangement work effectively enough to make you actually feel for the guy. Although it was far from a solid debut, his first album showed signs of promise.

His new album throws whatever promise I may have fostered for Cope in the trash. Although the title The Clarence Greenwood Recordings would suggest a more personal album, and the press release has Cope claiming, “…this time, anything that didn’t enhance the material or make the songs better, I just stripped away,” this album is white funk for the easy listening crowd. The beats would sound just as apt backing Phil Collins or Kenny G. For reasons unknown, he also feels the need to have long sections of each song be instrumental. Now, nothing is happening in these sections, no guitar solos, no solos at all, no variation- just the same rhythm and melody over and over, until you zone out entirely or the song ends, the former being the more likely case. Hell, the last track, Fame is three and a half minutes of waiting for Citizen Cope’s soothing voice to chime in…and then a fade out, thus making this the least essential instrumental track perhaps ever.

While on his last album, Cope showed signs of lyrical authenticity, here he takes the worst of what rap has to offer- tough guy lyrics, (lines like “mister officer / if you come to take her / then that means one of us is gonna leave here in a stretcher” from Pablo Picasso which, really, doesn’t even rhyme) and then litters these gems throughout the album. The strongest track on the album, “D’artagnan’s Theme” comes closest to an original lyrical idea, but its angry and strong chorus of “I don’t know how else to say / in a different kind of way but why don’t you just fade away” is muted by its rambling verses. We don’t find out who Cope wants to fade away, nor are we offered any explanation of why they should, except the Marley-ism of “there’s a battle going on down south of Babylon.” …ok…

Boy how well that machine has worked in the past! It’s given us boy bands and hair metal, among other things. Of course- the R&B/singer-songwriter mix is far from dead- one only needs to look at Jill Scott’s recent album or the work of Chocolate Genius to see exactly how to do it right. Citizen Cope was dropped from DreamWorks, one of the few major labels with a overall relatively respectable roster, after showing them this album (…that is, until they were bought by Interscope recently). One can only hope this release signals his end from RCA as well- I’m sure there’s some soulful guy with a guitar who can write better songs sitting in some coffee shop somewhere who deserves the exposure more than he does.

(RCA Records)

(Note: The Citizen Cope CD also contains an incredibly irksome piece of technology, CD3 technology by SunnComm, which overrides your media player when you play the CD on your computer, instead forcing you to play on its own ugly, full screen, low feature (it doesn’t have rewind or fast forward buttons, but for some reason allows you to listen to the music at three different speeds- fast, slow or normal. It also only allows you to copy the songs to your hard drive in the software’s proprietary format, stopping you from sharing the CD through file sharing software, or copying the CD to an iPod or other such device…although, really, I don’t know why you’d want to do either.)