Morcheeba - Dive Deep [CD]

Echo Records/Ultra Records

June 13, 2008, 06:10 PM

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I was skeptical of the approach Morcheeba had taken with the new album Dive Deep. Other projects have previously experimented by featuring guest vocals such as Monoband by former Cranberries guitarist Noel Hogan and Mark Ronsons Version. I was cautious to say the least.

The problem with this kind of project is that it's likely to fail in conveying the attention each song might gain if it had one specific singer.

One thing with Morcheeba is the fact that their name is still strongly bounded -like it or not- to the former vocalist Skye Edwards, who for most occasional listeners was the main reference linked to the band.

But if in the case of Mark Ronson's Version I had to re-think my prejudices, as the identity of the producer himself was so strong to actually be the stylistic link between all the songs. In this, Morcheeba's sixth album, the variety might actually be too much.

All the tunes succeed though in delivering clever and interesting lyrics. However, the sound gap sometimes might be so strong as to detach the concept of album to what might sound like just a gathering of singles belonging to different styles, people and yes... even different albums. Everything starts to make sense when you can see that, for this album, Morcheeba is more of an umbrella name for something bigger than just the Godfrey Brothers.

Enjoy The Ride, the first song on the album and wisely, the first single (as it is absolutely the most attention-grabbing track) features not only vocals but also contibutions on writing itself by Judie Tzuke, as she also does on Blue Chair. Run Honey Run is the folk-nearly-country homage to John Martyn's original song from 1967 while One Love Karma is the standalone hip-hop related song, featuring vocals and writing contibution by korean born US based rapper and producer Pete Chung.

Au de La is the "foreign song" featuring French singer Manda (who apparently contacted the Godfrey Brothers herself stating that singing for Morcheeba was her dream). The song is based around french lyrics, also co-penned by Manda Zamolo. Three songs (Riverbed, Sleep on It Tonight and Washed Away) are co-written and sung by the deep voiced norwegian singer/songwriter Thomas Dybdahl, and once again, you can tell there's a fil-rouge linking them stylistically in some kind of way.

Funnily enough, missing on a common link of a vocalist seems to be missing a common style which oversees and links all the songs, making Dive Deep surely a very eclectic album, but on the other hand it also fails to have a specific identity.

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