No, I Look Good In Leather

So how would you react to your band being dropped, then splitting up? with my skyscraping levels of ambition and drive I would probably just shrug my shoulders, say ‘oh well, I gave it a bit of a go’ and then have a career in insurance fraught with myriad regrets and repetitive bouts of self-loathing.

Luckily for lo-fi neo soul, beat and hip hop, Cody Chestnutt* is made of far sterner, more adamantine stuff than I. He hunkered down with a 4-track recorder in his bedroom with one microphone, an organ, a bass, a guitar and drums and laboured his way to a 36 track LP, often using his headphones as studio monitors in order not to wake his roommate; he christened it The Headphone Masterpiece.

Record companies rejected ‘the overlong demos‘, they mistook the LP for and Chestnutt released it himself via something called ‘the internet’ in 2002. Word of mouth and write-ups led to a physical release later that year and a vinyl one in 2004.

Some of those words of mouth, found their way into my hear of ears, via my friend Matt and I ended up with a taped copy that I parleyed into a triple vinyl copy a few years later.

The Headphone Masterpiece is a helluva thing.

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So there’s music on here. A lot of music. Think a backyard version of the ambition of Prince’s Sign Of The Times, crossed with the occasional sonic oddness Tusk, crossed with the scope and scrape of Beck covering the entirety of Songs In The Key Of Life. That’s for starters.

Straight up I will say, it ain’t all great. Chestutt meanders down a few musical cul-de-sacs where the ideas/execution don’t merit their grooves and has an occasional, alarming propensity towards outright boneheaded misogyny, weirdly usually within a 2 song radius of a very sweet love song; basically swerve ‘Bitch, I’m Broke’ is my advice and ‘Daddy’s Baby’ is just weird sickly.

But** all this is interlaced with some extraordinary, cough, snatches of song and melody; some of which sound like they could have done with a bit longer in the oven, others are just served perfectly al dente.

Beauties:

• Serve This Royalty – Silky smooth, neo soul, hymn about something or other, possibly the majesty of ladykind. Gorgeous tune.
• Look Good In Leather – Relatable braggadocio, especially when you look as great as I do in dead cow. I love the strut of this.
• The Seed – Awesome positive guitar groove. Recognised by The Roots when they covered it, featuring Mr C on their Phrenology LP.
• My Women, My Guitars – Because both can be important.
• 5 On A Joyride – Like a soulful Eels.
• Boylife In America – A deceptively sweet falsetto when you listen to the lyrics.
• Michelle – Because I cannot for the life of me classify it, but I like it.

Some of the tracks hereabouts could have used a little more sanding down and varnishing, but that’s the interesting bit, the whole point of The Headphone Masterpiece. It is possible that critical, frictional contrast between getting it done and out there, is directly related to the contrast in polishing these songs and retaining enough of their sandpaper surface to keep them from going down too easy. This type of soul/R&B/Hip-hop-hybrid usually revels in lushness and luxury, which for me is like being drowned in unsalted butter, I’d far rather a bit of sand in the sun cream.

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Following The Headphone Masterpiece CC has hooked up with other musicians, toured, released more records and it has to be said cut some very good tracks (‘Til I Met Thee’ is a goodie) but, inevitably never topped it. How could anything else stand toe to toe with this LP borne of ambition, chutzpah, desperation and uncertainty?

I think I will make my debut a 37 song, quadruple LP, mind you that’s a lot of work. I might just get an early night instead, I’ve got work in the morning.

1170 Down.

*he capitalises the final t’s thus, Cody ChestnuTT; I’m not doing that, its wanky.

**and I do like big buts.