ALBUM: London To Paris
ARTISTE: LMS
LABEL: VP/71 Records/Heritage Music Group
LONDON TO Paris, LMS' fourth album, adds up to less than the sum of it parts.
It should have been a cracker, the trio has the talent and experience to step up to the AKGs (or whatever high quality microphone is in the studios at the moment) and deliver. There is a top-flight set of musicians on the set and it shows in the horns of Dean Fraser and Nambo Robinson, the guitar of Ian 'Breezy' Coleman, the bass of Chris Meredith and keyboards of Roy 'Gramps' Morgan and Earl Fitzimmons, among other players of instruments.
And it is not no pyakah pyakah studios involved either, as there is Digital B, Tuff Gong, Big Yard and of course 71 Recording Studio among the places with knobs and dials where London To Paris was recorded.
Then there is the matter of family support (and you all should know that LMS compromises one-tenth of Denroy Morgan's children). So there are Morgans here, there and everywhere on London To Paris, in addition to Gramps Morgan on keyboards, including a Michael 'Twinkie' Morgan doing recording engineer duties and Mr. Mojo Morgan on Binghi drums and doing some rapping.
So all the elements are there for a good one, but London To Paris falls short on a critical element - content. The sentiments expressed on the album, from the value of family on Youth Dem No Fi Cry ("fathers and mothers with each other now/it's always better when de yutes see you together now") to reassuring a lover on No Other Girl ("no other girl could ever walk in your shoes/girl I will always be loving you/don't listen to those words your friends say to you/for they are only jealous of you") are admirable, but they are not expressed in an admirable way.
There is a lack of lyrical dexterity to London To Paris that no amount of pleasant harmonies and good musicianship (even those wicked guitars from Mitchum 'Kahn' Chin and Andrew 'Simmo' Simpson on I Adore You) can cause me to overlook.
One of the few moments on the album where I said a yeah to the lyrics was on Walk With Jah, where the trio inform "we a walk with Jah Jah some a walk wid bodyguard" (and the flute at the end, synthesised or not, does not hurt a bit either).
London To Paris goes through the roots reggae of Jah Soldiers to the borderline dancehall/hip-hop of Wit A 'G', making a brush with R&B on Not A Player. The latter two songs are on the final third of the album, separated by three audio skits, where there is a decided turn to the lovers' side of things.
Guests on the album are EMP, JB and Mr. Mojo.
The title track runs over LMS' troddings with "from London to Paris/Keep it moving/New York to Dallas/From Ja. we holding top status/... I'm known as a hustler and a provider ... What we do we love, we do this for the hustlers, the gangsters the thugs" to the music of Black Uhuru's What Is Life and there is definitely a trend towards mentioning far flung places, with the first skit taking place in an airport in England and the second on a bus in Berlin.
It is the final skit, though, Little Boy Listen, with which London to Paris ends, which solidifies a thought that had been niggling at the edges of my mind. In it, a little boy demands that his parents take him to see LMS. His mother is reluctant and the father finally gives in with "aright me son, me a go carry yu go a de show" after the kid calls out the names of the group's members.
Then it hits me. With the skits, the reviews of their career (add Nah Play Wit Dem to London To Paris) and the reassurance to a lady that they are in good hands because they are Wit A G, this LMS album is overly self-indulgent.
TRACK LISTING
1. Jah Soldiers
2. Youth Them No Fi Cry
3. London To Paris
4. Airport Interview (skit)
5. Walk Wit Jah (featuring Mr. Mojo)
6. Rasta Flex
7. Nah Play Wit Dem (featuring EMP)
8. Can't Stop
9. Nuh Inna Dem (featuring JB)
10. On The Bus (skit)
11. Broke My Heart
12. No Other Girl
13. Not A Player
14. I Adore You
15. Wit a 'G' (featuring EMP)
16. Little Boy Listen (skit)
- Mel Cooke
