Eighteenth Street)
The new Thievery Corporation album Radio Retaliation (Photo from
Rating: 4.5 stars/5 stars
The first thing that jumps out about Radio Retaliation is the packaging: just a simple cardboard sleeve containing a 30″x20″ poster/liner notes enveloping the CD.
I happen to be a fan of creative presentation, so the liner notes were a particular treat: a poster with black and white silhouettes interspersed with the lyrics of the songs and quotes from various famous people, with a red, green and yellow bull’s-eye in the center that the liner notes share with the CD.
Judging from the case and the police siren accompanied by a duet chanting “sound the alarm…order the attack” opening the record, Thievery Corporation is up to something different. While Radio Retaliation could be classified as a political album, the political statements the group tries to make are unclear. The closest I can get to it is that it has something to do with environmentalism (largely due to the recyclable packaging), but there isn’t really any evidence for that. It could just as easily be argued that Thievery Corporation is decrying the genocide in Darfur.
On Radio Retaliation‘s first seven tracks, Thievery Corporation takes the listener on a tour of the world’s music, starting off in the Caribbean with the vaguely reggae stylings of the opening track, followed by India, Nigeria, Brazil, Mexico and finally China on “The Forgotten People.” Despite the tremendous number of world influences very authentically felt throughout the album, it manages to remain coherent thanks to the amazing dexterity with which Thievery Corporation changes setting.
Part of this dexterity comes from the universal nature of the background soundscapes Thievery Corporation creates, and part of it comes from a similar subject matter (or perhaps the lack thereof). The second half of Radio Retaliation is more reminiscent of their previous work and down-tempo music in general. Something that one notices about the second half is that the song titles are very appropriate: “Beautiful Drug,” “Sweet Tides” and “The Shining Path” are all songs that are beautiful, sweet and shining.
Indeed, the entire album can be described as all these things as well. Despite the fact that it’s almost 56 minutes long, it breezes past all too quickly. This is partially due to the fact that this kind of lounge music lends itself well to breezing past the listener but also due to the fact that, unlike a traditional album, Radio Retaliation does not have any peaks or valleys. Rather, the CD meanders about, and while that lends itself well to producing a coherent album, the apparent message Thievery Corporation was trying to send, assuming there was one, is largely lost on the listener. But thanks to the accessible nature of the music, we don’t care.