Morcheeba

Charango (Reprise)
by Lex Marburger

More stoner-hop from the Brits, this time slick like Sade, and surprisingly offensive, to some. Once you get past the jazzy, mellow, feel-good slackerdom of “Slow Down” and “Otherwise” on Charango, you get to a track called “Women Lose Weight,” which features Slick Rick. Now, no one has to tell me about how first person narration can prove to be more ironic that sheer indictment (hey, I’m a big fan of Big Black and Nomeansno, so I know about that, y’know?), but there’s nothing about this tale of a man killing his overweight wife because she’s fat that makes a person think about the shallowness of humanity, etc, etc.

In fact, the moral of the story, according to Rick, is that women should stay thin to make their husbands happy so they won’t kill them. How nice. Kinda blows the mood of the disc out of the water, huh? It would be something if it was clever and funny, like Eminem, but it’s not. After something like that, it doesn’t even matter if tracks like “Way Beyond” or “Get Along” float by like warm summer breezes. It’s an album killer.