UZI &
ARI – headworms
(CD, own)
They call them “headworms” and I am one hundred
percent sure they mean their songs and nothing else. I am a big fan of the
movie Tremors, even the second part, but talking about that trash movie
would shed a very askew picture on the songs on this album. These are finely
written and arranged songs that use simplicity and dynamics to evolve from
something small and unremarkable to sparking brightness and beauty. Very
much like James Blunt is not able to produce in the last year. Listening to
the album this should be clear from the very first song onwards, where they
lay down the map for what is to come with open clarity. The songs usually
start with some strumming or plucking of notes on a variety of instruments
and then move onwards to a point where the arrangement suddenly blooms into
something big and beautiful, for instance with the help of a string section,
a beautiful harmony or a chorus that will stay inside your mind for weeks.
Yes, that is pop alright. It is melancholic, sadly
trodding and homespun pop music of and for people who like to stay at home
and dream up their own world. Who don’t believe the hyped promises of
television advertisements and lifestyle magazines that only action and
networking and ripping the goods out of live can bring joy and happiness.
Quite the opposite, they understand live in a way that ease and depth of
emotion are the only qualities that count and that there is a higher form of
beauty in a long lasting deep relationship with somebody that is much better
than an endless string of powerful one night stands. And the hope that this
special someone may turn into the love of their live, the biggest love of
the century, is what keeps them going in a world that is turning more and
more superficial. It is this hope that makes them write songs to a real or
imaginary special someone, and sometimes they go out and have them recorded.
And in one out of a million times this urge is paired with a vision of
something bigger than homerecorded guitarstrumming and a talent to get this
vision on tape.
Back to more mundane matters, back to music. This kind
of approach to pop music is paradoxically quite unpopular at the moment.
People seem to want drug addicted girl singers with strange voices and
Sixties soul beats, which by the way is much better than the dance-gym
trained, peroxide disco hardbodies of last season. Still, this kind of music
needs time and that is probably the scarcest resource nowadays, even rarer
than crude oil and fresh air. These songs need time to evolve until they are
ready to be recorded, time to hone their arrangement to a crude sort of
perfection and finally, but probably most important, time to be listened to.
Maybe that is the reason why I haven’t have heard anything from Badly
Drawn Boy (hah, autocorrection just made that Badly dressed boy...) and Arab
Strap in the last years, because they have caught themselves in a trap that
is just too obvious and serious for songwriters like these. I would have
mentioned Travis too, but Uzi & Ari lack the desire to play festivals.
Their music is strictly for personal listening. On the other hand Uzi &
Ari would easily deserve the same kind of success, dining with the big heads
and recording songs for movies to earn their pension funds.
