`Stupid' Album Anything But

You reach a point when you've got plenty of reason to wave your elbows around--Sly & the Family Stone, Dexie's Midnight Runners, Blues Travelers. New records have to convince us that they're playing our song, that they speak for us, while the bands of the past were just literature. On their cleverly titled album, Stupid, Stupid, Stupid, Black Grape seduces us with a smile, skipping out in front of their stodgity still-lounging-beneath-the-shade-of-the-Beatles-Tr ee British counterparts.

As may be guessed, there is nothing dim or self-conscious about Stupid, Stupid, Stupid. It's the second album from Black Grape, resurrected pop-maverick Shaun Ryder's comeback band. Rapper Paul "Kermit" Leveridge counterpoints Ryder's slow whines with sarcastic ribbets and deep-throated chants. These two are the front men for a liberating eclecticism that trickles down to every arrangement on the album.

Gleefully banging around on sitars, harmonicas, horns, Hammond B-3's and flutes, other band members Carl "Psycho" McCarthy, Danny Saber, Paul "Wags" Wagstaff, Ged Lynch and Martin Slattery reduce their basic guitar, drum and bass sounds into nothing more than a wooden easel on which to paint. Stupid, Stupid, Stupid opens its arms wide and embraces the world with a sarcastic life, claiming copyright by lyrical fiat.

Black Grape fills the album with a premeditated bounciness. Backed by a sharp electric guitar scale, Shawn Ryder enunciates "Dinnuh's in the cellar, I can smell 'er" with an almost Kurt Cobain-ish seriousness, then shifts into the light-hearted teenage chorus "I wanna get cheeky with ya, I wanna get squeakly inside ya--lying through your teeth for a week!" on "Squeaky." If you come to Stupid, Stupid, Stupid with certain antigravity expectations, these lyrics will make you jealous. Distancing themselves from their subject matter through sarcasm, Black Grape come over to the audience, throwing a post-rock party where drugs, ex-girlfriends, and guitar solos are just instruments for the bands to play on.

The first track on Stupid, Stupid, Stupid, "Get Higher," begins with the announcement from a Ronald Reagan impersonator than, unfortunately, there is a marijuana shortage. This is the kind of thing that makes one wonder why the band is bothering to play. But by the time "Reagan" announces that furthermore, he and Nancy are also hooked on heroin, the beat on "Get Higher" has set up shop in the listener's mind, and nothing could seem more logical than the rhythmic wailing that follows the sound dub.

So the album goes, mixing Frank Zappa into a black sheep cover of Frederick Knight's northern soul lament, "Lonely," taking a cool, excited, but never tense reigns over the popular arrangements and sound bites of Western culture. On "Marbles," Kermit's soft spoken rap pulls a danceable pulse out of the rambling cowboy melody that eventually surrenders to a rousing disco-esque horn section. Only the fifth track, "Rubber Band," goes too far. Where the rest of Stupid, Stupid, Stupid makes a cheerfully boisterous rewiring of the listener's head, "Rubber Band" pummels it with a crow bar.

Black Grape's endearing range of tropes and narrowness of tone would be hypocritical if it did not offend. The album cover features an almost sambo-like purple face, and the inside artwork is a melange of Aunt Jemima figures, smiling Aryan face and blonde hour glass cartoons. "Marbles" opens with the dub of a righteous gospel preacher: "A whistling woman...is an abomination to the lord" and leads into the chorus "Why you say yes when you know you mean no?," playing on current sexual protocol. Of course of few in the crowd might even take issue with the band's Reagan-abuse.

Here, the funky part of one's soul wants to stand up for Black Grape in the name of aesthetics and the sublime. After all, the album's title came from the words Kermit once had to substitute on television for the line "talking bullshit...bullshit...bullshit" from Black Grape's first album: "talking stupid... stupid...stupid" seems apt. Children listening to Black Grape can count on getting some very wrong ideas, and all good people everywhere whose sympathy is not limited to liberal white drug-using men can count on being insulted by some part of the album or another. This certainly isn't a time in the music world when we can feel secure enough to letpeople get away with anything without protest.

But I wonder if taking offense at thismulti-racial band would be taking them tooseriously. Or not seriously enough. More thananything political, their message is in theirfavoring of combination over content. When ShaunRyder sings about sexism, he is in a sense mockingit, defusing it with the same sarcasm thatdeflates everything he touches. Just what BlackGrape believes is Stupid, Stupid, Stupid isobvious. Laughing as they rocket over the egoismof grunge and the self-conscious stylism of Oasisand Blur, Black Grape has no inclination not toalso leave political music in the scrap heap. Whenit comes to humor, there is intelligence in seeingthe commonalties between politically correctnessand training wheels. In the middle of "Lonely," adrunk Shaun Ryder makes an edifying "It's up toyou" speech; in an interview he said he only hopedpeople didn't take him seriously.

The thing to take serious is the freedom theband attains. In a world of subtle electronicsound and jarringly sincere whining, a Black Grapeachieves escape velocity, fueling its rise withthe trends and taboos of musical ferment. Don'texpect a potpourri from "Stupid, Stupid, Stupid,"expect an intelligent, multi-planar bath inendearing irony

But I wonder if taking offense at thismulti-racial band would be taking them tooseriously. Or not seriously enough. More thananything political, their message is in theirfavoring of combination over content. When ShaunRyder sings about sexism, he is in a sense mockingit, defusing it with the same sarcasm thatdeflates everything he touches. Just what BlackGrape believes is Stupid, Stupid, Stupid isobvious. Laughing as they rocket over the egoismof grunge and the self-conscious stylism of Oasisand Blur, Black Grape has no inclination not toalso leave political music in the scrap heap. Whenit comes to humor, there is intelligence in seeingthe commonalties between politically correctnessand training wheels. In the middle of "Lonely," adrunk Shaun Ryder makes an edifying "It's up toyou" speech; in an interview he said he only hopedpeople didn't take him seriously.

The thing to take serious is the freedom theband attains. In a world of subtle electronicsound and jarringly sincere whining, a Black Grapeachieves escape velocity, fueling its rise withthe trends and taboos of musical ferment. Don'texpect a potpourri from "Stupid, Stupid, Stupid,"expect an intelligent, multi-planar bath inendearing irony