I think his analysis of the use of harmony is dead on --- what's interesting to note here (I think) is that compared to Voodoo, D is packing fewer harmonic/chordal extensions into the vocals themselves than he did in Voodoo. Voodoo features these superdense vocal clusters (which is a lot of what I love about that album, and what keeps it as one of my top albums of all time) ... super-innovative and super effective.

On this record, the vocal clusters are less dense harmonically... the layers are thick in terms of melody, but gravitate around just a few lines of harmony... where as on Voodoo, you had vocal layers often performing the work of a full piano player (best metaphor I can come up with).

What this writer picks up on is where those harmonic extensions go... I think he's right to highlight that D's gone more the *implied* route here, which is sort of like trading Bill Evans for Coltrane. (I don't know if that allusion matches up, but it sounds good to me right now.. in terms of style, of course, not a judgment of merit.) Instead of concentrating the extensions in vertical vocal clusters, they are more distributed across the band's arrangement, *or* across the full length of the vocal line. I need to listen more with this in mind, but I think it's a sound analysis, and a rather astute one on the writer's part.


-thebigfunk

~ i could still snort you under the table ~