Ari Up: Dread More Dan Dead
Label: Collision
Release Date: 6/12/05
Review Date: 5/12/06
Let’s get the pedigree out of the way. Ari Up is a founding member of the legendary Slits and step-daughter to Johnny Rotten. She went MIA for a while, and now she’s back. So how do you go from being a ground-breaker in 1977 to releasing your first solo in 2005? Well you know how it is with the lunatic fringe of those creative types, they go wherever the wind or their creative genius blows them.
When you lay the Slits on an unsuspecting punk fan you’ll get a lot of different reactions, but usually it’s as if something landed from outer space. Excitement is shortly met by disappointment as the limited recordings available are quickly exhausted. I mean, fuck! There are some amazing moments on that first Slits record. So what can you expect from Dread More Dan Dead? In some ways it’s a logical progression from the dub-infused grooves on Cut. It’s unmistakably Ari Up. Dance hall seems to be where all the energy in reggae is these days, and the opening track “Baby Mother” fits in the genre as do others. Some have a more trip-hop feel to them, except with a Jamaican patois. Some, like “Me Done” sound like Lee Perry / Mad Professor collaborations. In the tradtion of the Slit’s version of “Heard it Through The Grapevine”, “Young Boy” turns the tables on the Gary Puckett track “Young Girl” form the 60’s. You know, “Young girl, get out of my life…” Young Boy is not as striking as Grapevine, but it makes an otherwise irritating song very listenable.
There are a few low points on the record, such as “Bashment”, which is uneven dancehall hybrid at best, and blandly boring at worse. Kind of a commercial hip-hop blandification. “Allergic” tries too hard to remind everyone that she is Ari Up of the Slits, and was a punk in the 70’s. It’s kind of a transparent and clumsy song that is out of place on Dread More Dan Dead. You might also want to take issue with Ari’s assertion that Danceahall is where the punk ethos is now. It seems like most Dancehall is formulaic as today’s R&B and pop-punk is. Given the general misogyny and intolerance of publicized dancehall you have to wonder how she reconciles that. Another odd thing is the contest that is printed on the back of the album cover. There last two tracks are instrumental or vocal only. The contest is for the listener to fill in the rest and the winner will be on the next 12″ single, which is great but it sounds a little desperate to print that on the original artwork and there is no mention of a timeframe on the record or the web site.
The disc contains a video for “Me Done” with an alternate mix and a secrete track “The World of Grown Ups” a standard punk garage tune with reggae breaks and some very boastful speech from Ari Up. On the whole, fans of the Slits will not be disappointed by Dread More Dan Dead. Sure, it’s not as groundbreaking as Cut, but it is well done and interesting with the exception of a couple of duds. If you are hungry for more Slits, you’ll be interested to know that they have reformed in some capacity and have been performing some of the tracks from Dread More Dan Dead, all though the Slits web site is spotty with the details.
UPDATE: 7-13-06 – Recently in the print magazine Venus, Ari Up has been slagging off bands for reuniting and doing the same old thing to cash in on the resurgence of punk while claiming that the newly reunified Slits completely reject that concept and will not be doing a re-hash. Specifically, she seems to have a beef with the Buzzcocks. Well Ari, while you were off running around on an island for the past couple decades, the Buzzcocks have been steadily at it. In fact, when they re-formed in the early 90’s there was no popular resurgence of punk. They picked up almost as if they never stopped and continued to make new records. While not drastically different from the predecessors, they were a somewhat logical progression. Ari seems to overestimate herself. Dread More Dan Dead isn’t exactly groundbreaking, nor is it a departure from what you’d expect, and the Slits have performed songs from this abum. The couple of mediocre dancehall R&B tunes and the pseudo-punk track on Dread certainly pander more towards blatant commercialism than any Buzzcocks tune I can think of. Ari has a chip on her shoulder. She’s got a lot of talent and makes interesting music, but she ought to keep her mouth shut instead of dishing out knee-jerk and unwarranted criticisms that make her sound jealous and bitter.