Lou Bond – Lou Bond (Light In The Attic)

Review by Stephen Taylor

Well stone me. You wait 30 years for a new Gil Scott Heron album and then two come along at once.

Lou Bond may me new to you and me, but hiphopapotamuses have been sampling him for decades. This self-titled re-release gives those of us that don’t have access to the bargain vinyl bins in Memphis record shops a chance to listen to this 1974 LP for the first time. The vibe is mid-70s funk at the beautiful moment when the Motown and Stax stars got political and started railing against the man. Less fey than Arthur Lee and Love (though the debt is unmistakeable), and just about more credible than Curtis Mayfield’s agitprop fist pumping, here’s an ultra-smoothly arranged protest record masquerading as pick-up music.

Folk fans beware, there’s not much here to hey your nonny no to, but as an extension of the protest music of the 60s it’s a fascinating artifact. The star of the show is an 11-minute track (I LOVE an 11-minute track) To the Establishment which is quietly, gently, mumblingly really cross about something. Feeling like a hot walk across an American city in the company of an incoherently brilliant homeless drunk person, it swells and ebbs in and out of coherency, shakes its fist at a pigeon and then finally slips into a ditch and falls asleep. Oh yes.

Lucky Me and That’s the Way I’ve Always Heard It Should Be are just the sort of sub-Gaye, social and family commentary rambles that Scott-Heron slipped in between killer tracks. Why Must Our Eyes Always Be Turned Backwards has an undeniable groove. I was never going to like Come on Snob (are you baiting me Lou Bond? ARE YOU? I’M READY FOR YOU LOU BOND!), which is a hopelessly naive whinge for equality sung in a sill baby voice, but is almost saved by pretty strings and floaty flutes. Let Me Into Your Life is pick-up music masquerading as nothing but pick-up music.

So totally locked into the 70s it could be a white dog poo trapped in amber, or Stuart Maconie’s sense of cultural identity it’s a bus stop on the protest music journey that’s well worth getting off at. Or down to. Or some such shit.

Stephen Taylor