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| Glorious Cassette |
 By: Orr |
It's another glorious Tuesday, and time again for this glorious column to take you and wrap you in its tentacles of titillating terseness. I always think it’s good to kick things off with a wordy first line just to get the creative juices flowing. Hopefully this will get your creative juices flowing also, as you bathe – or wallow even – in this glorious (three times in one paragraph. Not bad, huh?) article. I’m not sure if you know this, but every Tuesday after I have successfully put my column to bed (that’s journo speak btw), I immediately set out on a frenzied quest for new material to cover for the following week. You were under the impression that I would just find some laurels and promptly rest on them. Nay fair reader, that’s not my steez. Eking out the finest of audio artifacts for your perusal is how I roll.
So this week I bring your attention to quite an unusual album. The artist is Cassette aka Devin Smith, and the album is called Beautiful California. We all knew that California was beautiful and full of beautiful things. It’s nice to be reminded though, especially when you’ve just walked up Sixth Street between Folsom and Market, and have absorbed the full, rich bounty of this urban wonderland. Yeah.
Anyways, back to this captivating album by Mr. Smith. There are thirty-five tracks in all, on one disc. This means that most of the songs are under a minute in duration, with the longest tune clocking in at two minutes and fourteen seconds.
I can sense a collective “pah” out there in my readership, but please don’t be so dismissive. This album is texturally, musically and lyrically involving, it’s just that Devin Smith doesn’t waste time beating around the bush. He finds a melodic strain and a good beat and then fastens his lyrical ideas to them. The music swings from strummy acoustic numbers, to driving punky things and also touches on danceable electronic beats and sounds. Track thirty-four is thirty eight seconds of ocean sounds and is called “Ocean Sounds.” The closing track, and the longest one on this opus is called “Streetlights” and is beautiful, sweeping, lush and romantic; a perfect fusion of rich electronic sounds, Smith’s wistful vocalizing and captivating melodic touches.
It’s easy to think that Smith is taking an easy way out in writing and producing tracks that are so short, but fifty six seconds into the opening track, “Fingernails,” and you’ll be thinking different, like an Apple ad. Its driving bassline, bouncy electronic beats, raspy guitar and “I bite my fingernails when I’m waiting for you to call” lyrics say all that needs to be said about waiting for that call from that person you’ve been waiting to call you. Why complicate the issue? Smith certainly doesn’t. Some might call his approach frivolous, but I think playful is a much better appraisal of this genuinely interesting album.
With thirty-five tracks in all it’s difficult to give a blow-by-blow assessment, but who needs my assessment anyway. Simply put, this album kinda rules. It’s unpretentious, immediate, involving and punches right to the heart of the subjects it deals with. Check out track five, “Swingin’ Hips,” and you’ll be sucked in by its grooving bassline, you’ll hope that it never finishes and you’ll hope that the DJ has two copies so you can get down to it for more than one minute and thirteen seconds. But like a killer break in hip-hop, Smith keeps it going just enough for you to want more of it. There’s a certain modest ingenuity to that, especially when the cd jumps to the seventeen second long, “Hooray For Everything,” with its cheering and applause sounds.
While listening to this album you might feel that maybe Smith was always the class smart ass, but he’s probably just smart, and very smart at that. This is a great album, an awesome artistic statement and a lot of fun. Go and get it and bask in the whole thirty-five tracks.
Kick back to it, dance to it, and bite your nails to it.
I’m out.
Orr
www.cassettemiami.com
www.devinsmithmusic.com
www.honorrollmusic.com
www.atomisk.com
www.myspace.com/devinsmith
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