Don Letts - Outta Sync - The Singles, Reviewed

Don Letts - Outta Sync - The Singles, Reviewed 

DJ and filmmaker Don Letts I think is one of the more underappreciated figures in the pivotal 70s UK punk movement. Starting out as a videographer for The Clash, he eventually became a very prominent name in that scene, shooting reams of important archival footage such as for his 1978 ‘Punk Rock Movie’, and even (rather sensically given his reggae background) at one point managing The Slits. Over the years though, Don has also been involved in a number of musical projects, most notably co-founding Big Audio Dynamite with Mick Jones. Now though, after over 45 years in the business, it’s his turn to show what he can do. Teaming up with producer Gaudi, Don’s debut solo album ‘Outta Sync’, set for release on September 29th, purports to display Don’s eclectic range of influences from the worlds of reggae, pop, and rock, combining them in a D.I.Y. style. So, let’s have a look at the singles to see how that’s panning out.

Outta Sync

Musically this is honestly a pretty damn good start. Despite the 70s drum machine beat sounding slightly dinky, the way Gaudi’s production beefs it up along with the aid of some classically reggae drum fills works very effectively. Of course, what would a reggae track be without the bass? Well, I’m happy to report it does very well, offering up a simplistic, yet great, deep, rubbery bassline that gives the track a pretty nice groove. Not only is the rhythmic stuff here very strong, but the melodies are also really cool too. Whether it’s the bright, clean, echoey guitars, splashes of honky tonk style piano, or the great cheerful melodica passages and quirky synth effects, all these elements compliment each other very nicely to create a summery, chilled out, tranquil vibe, which serves it very nicely. For me though, the star of the show instrumentally has to be the saxophone. Offering up some brilliant, serene melody lines on the verses and choruses, as well as a really cool psychedelic solo on the bridge with the additional synth pads, it just adds a layer of effortless swagger that’s very infectious. However, when considering the vocals, that’s where some of my problems begin. Don doesn’t have a bad voice, no, but I think the choice to go for a spoken word delivery on the verses, especially given some odd turns of phrase and the way he sometimes veers into awkward line deliveries for the sake of fitting to the beat, can make them sound pretty tacky and forced, and honestly a little bit cringe. In addition, while the chorus I suppose is fairly catchy, the very cheery, bright sounding group vocals make it sound pretty overdone and almost too bright in my opinion, to the point where in some contexts, my enjoyment of the instrumental suffers in consequence. It’s just way too cheery and serene, even verging on saccharine sometimes. The lyrics do lend to some of that as well, as Don describes the musical dichotomy of his upbringing, and the humour of “trying to be a rebel, but living with your mum”, before going onto comment on how now that he’s matured, he’s glad he doesn’t have to face the problems of modern youth, while also admitting that the older generation aren’t exactly a beacon of knowledge either. Lyrics like this would be kind of cheesy as it is, but the bright, shiny instrumental and awkward delivery just serve to make that even more apparent, not to mention that, as they would with anyone, lyrical references to modern day phenomena like TikTok never fail to make me wince. So the instrumental to this one in isolation is honestly pretty good, effectively displaying those heavy reggae influences with a pop edge. It’s just a shame that for me the vocals and lyrics just end up diminishing that enjoyment a fair bit in the end.

The Universe Knows What You’ve Done (Ft. John Cusack)

OK, my review of the last track wasn’t amazing, but at least it was pretty damn good on a musical level. This one just feels like a complete mess on basically every level. Instrumentally I’ve no clue what they were even trying to go for here, the dark pianos, quirky electronics and squelchy bass sound like something from the soundtrack of a kids’ Halloween film, the drums and all the weird offbeat fills just sound really awkward and barely have a sense of rhythm to them at all, and when it eventually morphs into a pumping house groove it just throws me for a loop even more than it already was. Additionally, the shots of things like echoey guitars, horns and pianos just feel like they were put in as a token gesture to remind people they’re listening to a reggae album in case they forgot, and the electric guitar passages are basically a non-factor on top of all of that, and don’t even sound too good either. The couple things melodically I can give this track is that I think the almost G-funk style synths on the chorus have a pretty cool sound to them, and Don’s melodic yet slightly understated hook works well as well, but that’s about it. It just feels like a huge, amorphous, grey, musical splat where they throw everything at the wall and virtually nothing sticks. Vocally, aside from Don’s hook, they again go with the baffling decision to deliver the vast majority as spoken word, which is already kind of annoying enough, but rather than the care free whimsy of the last track, this time Don and John’s delivery shoots for something more sinister and dramatic, and so it ends up sounding all the sillier as a result, with John definitely being the prime offender. As a final cherry on the not very nice cake, the lyrical sentiment isn’t even remotely original. Reggae has been known in the past as music capable of inspiring change and social revolution, but here it just feels like they have the attitude, without the penmanship to carry it off, as the general sentiment of “we can’t have these celebrities and rich people exploiting the poor with fake news and blah blah blah any longer, karma’ll get them eventually” is not only overdone, but they don’t try to approach it in a remotely unique way. I really am baffled as to what went wrong here.

Touch (Ft. Gaudi)

Now unless my brain is playing tricks on me, this track wasn’t actually originally on the album, but then when this single got released, they altered the tracklist to put it on. So you’d think this would have to be a pretty strong track to warrant that treatment. Well to be frank, it’s not quite THAT good, but it is still pretty enjoyable overall. This one does definitely see a lot more rock influences come to the fore which is nice, whether it’s the 80s power ballad style guitar leads that go throughout, or the fast, strutting, almost uppity drum grooves on the chorus which have a pretty cool momentum to them, particularly when supplemented by touches of tambourine. There's certainly echoes of Specials or Madness-esque 2-tone stuff going on here, and I’m not mad at it. Funnily enough though, the verses with their punchy drums, deep, rumbling bass and psychedelic melodic flourishes goes for a much more straight up reggae sound like maybe the first track, and to my delight, they actually manage to combine the two pretty damn well, so credit where it’s due there. Although, I will say that there are parts where the execution leaves a little bit to be desired. More of a smaller point, but while the guitars don’t sound bad for the most part (if maybe a touch melodramatic), particularly on the verses when there’s less for it to hide behind, some of the more harsh, discordant passages sit a little weirdly. Mainly though, I think the track suffers from just sounding a bit too big for lack of a better word. Gaudi’s production has definitely helped to beef things up on previous tracks, but here it leads to the track sounding perhaps more clumsy than intended, particularly in the case of the drums. This is maybe most evident in the 2-tone chorus section where, particularly when repeated crash cymbals enter the picture in the last minute, it ends up having less of the sharp, punchy danceability that maybe a Specials track has, and instead sounds more lumbering and cacophonous, but overall the instrumental is still very strong. Vocally, I think Don has easily his strongest showing yet, primarily because he and Gaudi keep it simple. They employ a fairly straightforward sung delivery, but it’s catchy, the melodies are pretty infectious, it’s easy on the ears, it’s not too dramatic or flashy or with any unnecessary spoken word, and there’s some pretty decent harmonies and additional vocals from Gaudi throughout as well. I mean yeah, the lyrics talking about how Don thinks people should stop using religion simply as a crutch to escape life’s woes aren’t much to write home about, but not to the point I feel the need to complain about them. This track as I say is definitely the most straightforward so far, but I think it works because of it.

No Fooling Me (Ft. Hollie Cook)

Here’s a question: what happens if you make a clearly very capable musician and producer duo to collaborate with arguably one of the best respected and talented names in modern reggae pop? The obvious answer would be a great song, and that’s exactly what we get. Instrumentally, this really plays to Hollie’s strengths, being a great piece of deep, dubby pop. Gaudi’s production on this again is gargantuan, but it really works here. The floor shaking bass, the super punchy kick drums, the echo drenched snares and guitars, it is dub reggae to the absolute nth degree and I’m loving it. They balance all the melodic elements so seamlessly too, the interweaving of more offbeat reggae guitars and lighter melodic lines is great, and the touches of bright piano melodies and organs sound euphoric and vibrant. Even the bleepy, kind of morse code-y synths that I wasn’t a huge fan of on first listen have grown on me in context. They’re a little odd admittedly, but they’re used sparingly and subtly enough to where it’s not distracting or annoying which is pretty difficult to do. Full marks for the instrumental. Guess what? Vocally this is also a slam dunk. I’ll get my nitpick out of the way first, the lyrics comparing people’s life circumstances to a pack of cards, but discussing how often it’s actually somewhat predetermined, while Don works out how to get around his own situation - it’s not reinventing the wheel, but that said it’s certainly not approached nearly as tackily as it could be. Honestly, this feels a little more like a Hollie Cook song featuring Don Letts than anything, as she’s featured I’m pretty sure on every part of the song with vocals, but she absolutely crushes it. Not only does her laid back, chill, cool demeanour and vast vocal talent result in some absolute killer melodies and hooks in her middle register, but on top of that, her higher ad-libs at points throughout the duration of the song are just angelic, there’s no other word for it. It just sounds brilliant. That’s not to say Don sinks into the background though, quite the contrary. Not only is his slightly deeper, gruffer, rootsier vocal tone a great counterpoint and compliment to what Hollie’s doing, but the parts where he diverts from the main melody line to draw your attention, like with the higher transposition in the last chorus, it just goes to show the guy can be a damn good vocalist when he needs to be. What more can I say? A great instrumental, very complimentary vocalists, each with respectively very strong performances, I’d go as far as to say this is among the best reggae tracks I’ve heard for quite some time. Granted my experience in the genre is relatively minimal, but still, I’d like to think I know a bloody good one when I hear one.

Wrong

This is a bit of a weird one for me because I feel as though I should like it much more than I do, because there’s a lot here to like, but also just some stuff that kinda puts me off. As far as the instrumental goes, it almost goes for the same approach of ‘Universe…’ of just “let’s try a load of stuff and see what happens”, except it actually kind of works this time. It’s another more straight up reggae track, but with a bassline that, when combined with the guitars just over the halfway point, and to some extent by itself, has this pretty dirty, grinding, belligerent quality that I really like. You wouldn’t think that bass style would work with a reggae track, but there you are. The drums have a fair few bells and whistles to them too, the regular classic rhythms augmented with various eccentric percussive flourishes, from tambourines to even bongos, and I really appreciate them getting more varied with it, because the variety really helps to keep it interesting. That’s without even mentioning the melodies. As I’ve said already, the combination of the guitar and bass works a treat, but the touches of piano help to add that bright, ethereal sparkle, the white noise synths in the chorus actually do pretty damn well to foster a sense of drama, and the sitar-esque synth melodies and string sections in the outro work really well to cap things off. If that weren’t enough, the main melodic core of this track, that being the melodica, not only has some really cool melodies (as well as just sounding great, as it normally does), but the way Gaudi bends and manipulates the sound of it and combines it with these flourishes of sci-fi keyboards does really well to inject the track with an infectious sense of psychedelia. There are genuinely points where the instrumental makes you feel like you’re floating through space. My main problem with this track though, has a lot to do with its structure and its pacing. You get hit with a crap ton of ideas on this track, but basically all of them aside from the sitar textures and strings, get introduced in the first two or so minutes, and so the remaining three minutes can get to feel a bit of a slog, particularly with the relatively repetitive song structure. This track is also really maximal too as you might have guessed, so as cool as the idea of “sci-fi reggae” is, after the novelty wore off, there were points where I was sat thinking “there really is a lot going on here”, and I don’t mean in a good way. It becomes a bit difficult to focus on individual sounds, and those that you can, like perhaps the sci-fi synths, get to be a little tacky after a while. The vocals suffer for a similar reason. As I’ve said already, there’s a lot in the mix on this track, but if the vocals are strong, hopefully they can help draw our attention. In actuality, while the dramatic female backing vocals that follow the chorus are a pretty nice and interesting touch, Don’s vocal performance feels pretty nondescript. Like it’s decently melodic, and the dramatic vibe of the chorus works quite well, and again there’s no dramatic spoken word, but it’s nowhere near as enjoyable as ‘No Fooling Me’ or even ‘Touch.’ Outside of the chorus he just kind of… exists. Once again, that’s certainly not helped by the nothing burger of a lyrical sentiment either: “there’s so much unrest in the world, something’s going very wrong and we need to stop it.” Surely if you wanted to do social commentary you could do a BIT better? So this track has a hell of a lot of ideas, the majority of which are actually pretty cool, but once it runs out of new tricks two minutes in, the vocals and lyrics just can’t keep it afloat for the remaining three.

So where exactly does this all leave us? Well I reckon when the album comes out, likely what we’ll get is overall a pretty decent reggae pop album. The songs we’ve heard haven’t been perfect, but the majority have been enjoyable on at least some level, and in a couple cases, actually pretty bloody good. So what I’ll say I suppose is expect a relatively decent album, but don’t be surprised if there’s a few pleasant surprises in there as well.