Citizen Cope - The Clarence Greenwood Recordings (2003)

Tracklist

01. Nite Becomes Day
02. Pablo Picasso
03. My Way Home
04. Son's Gonna Rise
05. Sideways
06. Penitentiary
07. Hurricane Waters
08. D'Artagnan's Theme
09. Bullet and a Target
10. Fame
11. Deep


When a singer/songwriter fights the big record label - in this case Dreamworks - because it doesn't understand the artist's vision, then the artist buys his way out of a contract so he can go somewhere that cares, it's admirable and has a "this must be good stuff" allure for sure. Give one listen to The Clarence Greenwood Recordings and you might have a guess at why Dreamworks "mishandled" Citizen Cope. Ponderous, unfinished, and pointless when it's at its worst, the album Citizen Cope - singer/songwriter Clarence Greenwood's alias - fought so hard for is filled with metaphors and characters that are murky. Nothing in the surrounding context suggests you should try to figure them out either. A lost soul who falls in love with a billboard is the subject of "Pablo Picasso," but there's no insight, no pathos, and no point. It's sad when anyone mistakes inanimate objects for someone who loves them, but Citizen Cope's use of the character is so detached it borders on exploitive. The timely "people wanna bomb us" number, "Bullet and a Target," is the album's centerpiece and single, but it's just another shock-value laundry list of depressing situations - Billy Joel's "We Didn't Start the Fire" for the Dave Matthews generation. It also has one of those horrible Parental Advisory sticker-dodging moments that kept rearing its ugly head in 2004. The "father" in the story - another faceless character who doesn't get fleshed out - just doesn't give a F word, which is removed, leaving an audible blank space that the lyric sheet claims should've been filled with the word "enough." Turns out the devil you don't know (Arista in this case) might be as bad as the devil you do know (Dreamworks) and that the music artists rescue from big business isn't always worth hearing.

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