Music Of The Spheres

It’s hard to believe that this is Ian Brown’s third solo album. By this stage, the Stone Roses are too distant a memory to be any real pressure and Peter Buck has usurped Brown’s place as the air-rage star du jour. So it’s a good opportunity to listen to the music for what it is.

The single ‘F.E.A.R.’ opens the album on a high point – the strings perfectly opposing the electronic underbeat. Even after weeks of heavy radio rotation, it offers up new pleasures when given close attention. ‘Stardust’ is all booming orchestral electronica with a guitar line reminiscent of ‘Love Is Blindness’ era Edge. Brown’s incomparable vocals work their way around lyrics that are nothing short of bizarre – “Same DNA as stardust, like an elephant’s trunk.” Yet the way he sings it, it all appears to make sense. And for those of us who can’t be bothered deciphering any meanings, there’s ‘El Mundo Pequeno’ – sung entirely in Spanish.

As always Brown’s lyrics deal with all sorts of cosmic japery – “I came down through the stars, I landed from Mars, made my way down through the milky-way.” How involved Brown is, in the genesis of the music is anyones guess. I get the feeling he’s cleverly surrounded himself with a bunch of musicians who can take a lot of the credit – the right people to do justice to his own particular writing style.

The album’s title is a reference to the Pythagorean notion that the planets make a harmonious swishing noise

as they orbit the sun. I doubt very much that if we were to tune into that sound that it would in any way resemble the collection of tunes that Brown has assembled here. Still though, nice try.