If you're frustrated that '70s David Bowie CDs cost twenty bucks a pop and are impossible to find used, fret no longer. Chris Connelly's latest recording, Blonde Exodus, serves as a nice sampler of everything that was on the Bowie buffet during his creative peak.
Hardly a predictable development in the career of Connelly, who initially made his mark on the scene working industrially with Al Jourgensen on Ministry and Revolting Cocks records. Happily, he's advanced from the goofy yet gravelly Cocks rendition of Rod the Mod's "Da Ya Think I'm Sexy" to some seriously interesting and contemplative work.
The biggest and most pleasant surprise in listening to Blonde Exodus is the sheer quality and range of Connelly's voice. The Bowie comparison is not bestowed lightly: Chris offers one of the most startling white-boy wails since the Thin White Duke offered the world "Stay" back in '76. Who knew he'd evince the elegant vibrato that sends "London Fields" and the moody "Blonde Exodus -- Part I" into the stratosphere? Certainly not I.
Connelly also proves himself an accomplished poet, writing each of BE's nine multifaceted tracks. (I leave out the opening "Generique," whose French spoken-word is inscrutable to me, and the "Closing Titles," which are a needless bit of credit-rolling.) Never does he opt for the easy word or the obvious rhyme; instead, he speaks of "jump[ing] from roof to scandalous rooftop, pretending to fall" ("London Fields") and the way in which he "saw your precious mania diving for pearls / and swan-dive like Icarus into the underworld / clutching at air to be born on the ground / with a heartbeat like history that never was found" ("Diamonds Eat Diamonds"). Indeed, images of diving and falling recur through much of Blonde Exodus, befitting Connelly's agonized calls for help and salvation. The album reads at time like a best-of catalogue of Greek myth -- great fodder for an arty rock album, if you ask me. That the songs occasionally go on a minute or two longer than needed is only a minor taint to the big picture.
In an age when even the indiest of indies are striving for accessibility, it's refreshing to see someone remain an artist and, above all else, insistently challenge his audience to walk with him on the unsteady precipice between sensuality and fear. Chris Connelly's Blonde Exodus is one of those rare records that exists equally comfortably as sounds on a speaker and words on a page; that he acquits himself as a singer of considerable passion as well only adds to the pleasure of listening.
Good thing, too, since Mr. Bowie himself ain't makin' records like this anymore.
Joseph McCombs | April 25, 2001
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