Music Review Archives: Ian Brown - Golden Greats

(published offline in 2005 — Lost in the Grooves, edited by Kim Cooper and David Smay)

IAN BROWN

Kim and David’s zine spawned a great collection of essays — and one from me.

Golden Greats (Polydor, 1999)

In typically iconoclastic fashion, Ian Brown does his Stone Roses–based experimentations with dance backbeats one better on his second solo effort. The album forges a marriage of pop-rock accessibility and electronic fluidity that has seldom been achieved before or since.

Golden Greats is an inscrutably interesting animal from its first moments: versatile Aziz Ibrahim’s muscular guitar heroics burst from his jangling quasi-Asiatic introduction, while Brown the singer abandons his previously trademarked fey tonality, projecting a newly strong, moody and confident artist. As usual, his lyrics are often utter bollocks (“Dolphins were monkeys/That didn’t like the land”), but in the mode of muse-worship (e.g., “Set My Baby Free”), Brown delivers occasional poetry as welcome counterweight.

Words notwithstanding, the genius here is the songcraft. Masterful pop chord progressions guide the rhythmic side of a heavily electro mix, producing a relentlessly engrossing, Moby-esque effect. Although Brown is contextually closer to Seal than Moby—and more complex and rough-hewn than either artist—the appeal is to the same self-serious club-goers and couch-stoners. Brown’s real talents aren’t vocal or instrumental—they’re collaborative. On most tracks here, Dave McCracken, Tim Wills and Inder Goldfinger alternate guitar, percussion, keyboard, and production with a recently self-taught Brown. Why the work was so alchemically catchy this time around, however, is a true enigma.

Despite its innovative meld of rock bombast and trance-inducing electronics, Golden Greats was doomed almost immediately after release by Brown’s unfailing knack for self-sabotage. The Roses’ debut full-length inarguably changed the tone of British rock, but Brown and company waited four years to release a follow-up, during which time Oasis famously stole the Roses’ swagger and the Beatles’ songbook. If Golden Greats, which debuted in the UK at #9, might have given Brown a second chance to reclaim British music stateside for the forces of good, we’ll never know. Citing family obligations, he pulled out of all promotion of the album mere days before major PR for his U.S. tour was to begin.