Author: Aleš Podbrežnik
Artist: Kotzen, Richie
Label: Headroom-Inc
Release: 2015
Running time: 40:57
Rating: 4/5
If any solo musician on this planet is evolving at an exponential pace, it’s definitely Richie Kotzen. The guy is a dedicated workaholic who pours his energy into his solo career, where barely a year goes by without an official release, and in recent years he’s also been fully committed to the super rock band The Winery Dogs, who unexpectedly scored a huge success with their studio debut, so Billy (Sheehan), Mike (Portnoy) and of course our Richie unanimously decided to keep rolling together with a new studio album.
Richie Kotzen is regarded as an exceptional musical visionary, and whatever he takes on, he takes on for a solid reason and with a big, honest heart! The fruit of this sense of following your inner voice honestly as an artist is original music that’s always full of tangible substance, music that, in its authenticity and truthfulness, moves the body and soul of every listener so effectively.
Last year a double compilation titled »The Essential Richie Kotzen« came out. On it Richie also presented two brand-new songs. Both were packed with outstanding melodic catchiness. Still, neither of them hinted at anything like the sharp stylistic and sonic turn that the new album »Cannibals« brings compared with its studio predecessor »24 Hours« (2011). Kotzen had been signaling that with »24 Hours« he was calming down in how he expressed his ideas, but an album as sophisticatedly mellow as »Cannibals« was still not something you could have expected.
Kotzen has always been a big Motown fan, once strongly drawn to the high musicality of The Spinners and/or Hall & Oates, as well as a fan of seventies funk bands like The Meters, Funkadelic, Sly & The Family Stone. The softening of the rock elements, which were still tightly in focus on the album »Piece Sign« (2009), has thus hit its peak on »Cannibals« in no time.
The sudden shift is announced already by the album’s opening title track, backed by a classic seventies disco beat, where a lively funky bass line fills the space while Kotzen’s vocal steps clearly to the front. Kotzen has grown into an exceptional vocalist in recent years. You could say just in the nick of time. Especially considering the moment he decided on a radical stylistic and sonic leap like the one embodied by »Cannibals«. »Cannibals« is, after all, an album where one of the elements that actually brought Kotzen worldwide fame (and a price) moves into the background. That’s the guitar playing and the extraordinary virtuosity that this multilayered, finely chiseled musical master is capable of delivering on the instrument in his own writing. His vocal, or vocal interpretation, which has become astonishingly polished over the years, leads the new album from a central position. From start to finish. The vocal steps into the absolute foreground. The songs are formations of short, compact strokes. For the first time the quip that Kotzen, more than ever in his rich career, has followed the axiom »less is more« makes total sense.
Kotzen tests out some arranging moves he’d never tried in his career. The first is the programming in the opening track, the second is, say, the generous enrichment of the basic disco rhythm with percussion in the funk-electrified Shake it Off. That very track keeps the most sonic and stylistic kinship with parts of »24 Hours«. There are moments where Kotzen focuses on guitar noodling, but they no longer push to the front the way they did on previous albums. A guitar riff is often replaced by simple keyboard backing (or just a synth blanket imitating the strings of seventies disco funk). Two such examples are the pop-leaning Up (You Turn Me) and Come on Free. The peak of the softened arrangements on the album is the ballad You, where Kotzen, with a vocal performance of deeply felt, relived fervor, lifts the song to the album’s emotional high point. He pulls this off with nothing but piano accompaniment (in the »mid-eight« passage he gets modest but contrasting company from the »wailing« of a theremin). So all Kotzen needs is a vocal performance lived through again to get effectively under your skin. The song You shows vividly what a fascinating singer Richie Kotzen has become over the years. Kotzen has also progressed by leaps and bounds as a bassist, which is undoubtedly influenced by hanging out with Billy Sheehan in The Winery Dogs. The new album shows the musician’s tremendous confidence in that department too: he no longer worries about how to fill out the bass lines with guitar acrobatics. The bass lines are used very deftly melodically, while deliberately and freely »sticking out« of the sonic picture. One such example is I’m All In, where Kotzen is complemented in an excellent vocal duet by the album’s guest, Doug Pinnick of King’s X!
Kotzen makes up for pruning some of the elements that made him respected and recognizable with an exceptional sense of musicality. At the same time he pulls this off with a refined feel for the great, sensitive aesthetics of compact formatting of a given composition, now dominated by funky-disco rhythm, the tight integration of a thickened bass line and Richie Kotzen’s triumphant, passionately sensual vocal performance. This time around the guitar in the arrangements is at best an equal to the other instruments, if not subordinate.
»Cannibals« is an album that may split Kotzen’s fan base, or at least shake it up. To those of you counting on the guitar to dominate the album, I suggest approaching »Cannibals« with caution, since it’s an excellent achievement that deserves every bit of attention and chance. Kotzen wanted a change and, in his musical vision, he pulled it off triumphantly. It’s clear that on »Cannibals« you get 100% Richie Kotzen, while the man has also enriched his musical dossier by discovering and integrating musical and sonic expanses that are no strangers to the music world, only now they’re phenomenally woven into everything Kotzen basically envisioned with »Cannibals«.
Kotzen has put out an exceptionally mellow, disco-flavored album that keeps all the distinctive songwriting identity of this fantastic artist. I believe Kotzen will return to a sharper form of arranging songs, since the guitar has always been his first friend. »Cannibals« is an album that has surely caught connoisseurs of Richie Kotzen’s catalog on the wrong foot, but with the effect of a pleasant surprise. And Kotzen hasn’t lost one bit of his compositional and especially performance charm! Given the breakneck rock fury that The Winery Dogs’ musical ID is chock-full of, »Cannibals« is an excellent »valve« for Richie Kotzen, an expressive artistic »escape« through which he totally loosened up as a songwriter and, while integrating the sonic and stylistic changes, enjoyed himself immensely in the studio the whole time.
Lineup
Richie Kotzen, vocals, guitar, bass guitar, keyboards, programming, theremin, drums, percussion
August Kotzen – keyboards, backing vocals
GUEST MUSICIAN:
Doug Pinnick (King’s X) – vocals on track no. 6.
Production
Richie Kotzen
Track list
1. Cannibals
2. In An Instant
3. The Enemy
4. Shake It Off
5. Come On Free
6. I’m All In
7. Stand Tall
8. Up (You Turn Me)
9. You
10. Time For The Payment
