DIPLOMATS OF SOLID SOUND feat. The DIPLOMETTES – Plenty Nasty – 2008 – Album review
HIGHLIGHTS: Soul Connection – Smokey Places
SOUNDBITE: "As a girl/ My mama told me/ Get down on your knees and pray..."
RATING: 3.5/5
This fifth LP from Iowa’s Diplomats sees them benefiting from the addition of a 3 strong entourage of female vocalists - the Diplomettes - resulting in an LP rich in sister soul cuts and seasoned with the odd pinch of instrumental funk. Overall the whole thing is pretty solid - the problem is that there’s shitloads of this stuff around at the minute (or about to come out) (The Bamboos, Sweet Divines and Baby Charles come to mind just off the top of my head) and while this is runnin’, the ante has been upped significantly of late. In short this could have done with offering a bit more of the ‘nasty’ promised in the title. The opening (and title) track is a fairly workaday instrumental deep funk cut that like quite a few of the numbers on here is slathered in saxophone (and not in a good way – read acid jazz tendencies) – in fact by the third track I really wanted the tenor saxophonist to fall victim to a terrible sudden collapse of the plastic palm trees that so clearly surround him. It’s true that there is a place for the tenor sax on funk and soul records but by and large it’s a place that is well out of my fucking earshot. Come In My Kitchen the second, and first vocal, track has a wicked melody for the verse and a mean bass groove that recalls something by Vicki Anderson from back in the day - but for some reason the chorus just kind of…well…jars and it’s not the only one where this happens either. I don’t want to sound all negative as there are genuinely some good cuts in this album – though unusually (you want your best shit out front-of-house surely?) they are to be found in the second half. Soul Connection is a case in point – an organ driven vocal track where the band properly hit their stride and the Diplomettes get reflective while the Diplomats get their groove on. Things look up for a bit then as Smokey Places pretty much gets everything right – slower and stripped back, foregrounding the Diplomettes’ vocals as they get a bit of filth and raunch into their harmonies - this is well nasty and there’s plenty of it. B-A-B-Y goes for a more early-seventies sound and the horns and organ are spot on with this one but I still can’t make up my mind about the chorus which is catchy, certainly, as the Diplomettes sing/spell it out - but in a way that could be annoying or perfect. I’m still on the fence. To me funk should be all about the grind and the stank whereas this can at times be more of a polite fuck in the missionary position. My advice…easy on the sax…bit more of the sex.
Out now on Record Kicks.
RELATED LINKS
Listen to Diplomats of Solid Sound - Plenty Nasty LP
The Diplomats of Solid Sound - Myspace
The Diplomettes - Myspace
Record Kicks - Myspace
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