Alphabet Soup – Layin’ Low in the Cut – Review

Alphabet Soup

Layin’ Low in the Cut (Prawn Song/Mammoth)
by Elizabeth Parker

I look at the liner notes. They titled the first track “Oppression.” I can’t wait to spend the next 45 minutes cringing at some gangsta spitting racial politics-laden vitriol. But it’s not like that at all. Yowza! It’s like catching that rare 15-pounder in the overstocked CD pond. Alphabet Soup‘s hip-swinging bass riffs, sizzling sax, and smoothly rapped vocals pull the listener in hook, line, and sinker. The band tosses rap’s fury with soul’s hypnotic rhythms and fusion’s virtuosity into a savory mix of syncopated sounds.

Laying Low in the Cut projects the tension of a tasteful restraint barely held in check. Any minute you expect the nimble bass lines to explode into bombastic solos or the MC’s easy-going intonations to crescendo into screeching rage, but it never happens. The fluid synths and jazzy rhythms set an unruffled calm that carries through from beginning to end. The lyrics are pretty damned good, too. Some lines evoke every day city scenes. The speaker in “Walking Roots” describes an encounter with a bum asking for change as “…too much pressure, brotha gonna burst/my hands in my pocket for a dollar/but he’s dyin’ of thirst/night train ain’t much for quenchin’/and olde english adds too much tension…” Other lines veer towards social commentary. The refrain from “Year 2000,” “Look around in the year 2000/ You’ll start noticin’ a lot more brown ones,” harks back to Jimi Hendrix’s line from his Band of Gypsies album, “With the power of soul/any thang is possi-bowl” or when Steve Miller rhymed “taxes” with “facts is.” If those rhymes were fish they’d get thrown back, but somehow the singer gets away with it.