With heavy use of a certain vintage organ, a prominent horn section, no guitars but some vocals on the aggressive side, Fitz and the Tantrums will release their first LP ‘Pickin’ Up The Pieces’, a collection of 10 Motown-esque tunes, August 24 on Dangerbird.
Michael Fitzpatrick’s smooth but ardent and expressive vocal delivery (I would say there’s a little bit of Daryl Hall and Neil Diamond in it), combined with Noelle Scaggs’ velvety voice give a instantaneously recognizable sound to the songs which are nevertheless extremely faithful to the traditional sound of the genre with powerful chorus, clap-along rhythms, ferocious organ solos, saxs and drums. It’s joyous soul, with some determined and sharp intonation, more in your face than, let’s say Smokey Robinson, and some compelling songwriting even though the sound will inevitably remind you all the great Motown classics of the 60’s from Otis Redding to the O’Jays.
With other artists like Jamie Lidell, and Mayer Hawthorne, Fitz and the Tantrums participate to this recent soul revival movement, but I would not qualify any of them of retro, each of these artists bringing a different side to the picture, Fitz and the Tantrums going to the more rock-soul of the story with a modern twist. Sure the music of ‘Pickin’ Up The Pieces’ is not completely innovative, it borrows a lot to the soul-funk tradition, but the sincerity behind each track makes you take this album very seriously.
The ten songs show a great sonic consistency and if I said it was joyous soul, the lyrics could not be qualified the same way since the whole album is a break-up album. Fitz has been very open about the fact he was going through a terrible break-up when he wrote the album, so don’t look for any tenderness in the lyrics, there is no love song there!
Rather you will encounter bitterness in ‘Winds of Change’ even though the melody is uplifting, ‘You don’t know, what you have/You’re gonna find, I ain’t so bad/When I’m gone, and you’re alone, no one to give it to you’, or anger in ‘Breakin’ The Chains of Love’, ‘You been lying and cheating/Fooling around, messing around all of the time/No way I’m gonna find you/You’re making me god damn pay’, or pain and sorrow in the nostalgic gospel-like chorus of ‘Pickin’ up the pieces’, ‘Cuz I been runnin’ now for days/Pickin’ up the pieces of love/I’m not so sure it’ll go my way/that’s just the price of love’, or even aggressiveness and total badass declarations in ‘Moneygrabber’, ‘This ain’t your home/So I’m shown’ you the door, wave goodbye/now its time for you to go’… ‘I don’t pay twice for the price of a cheap dime whore!’. It sounds as if the mad black woman sleeping in Fitz, the Aretha Franklin type, is talking; not bad for a white boy who was born in France.
Some songs are more on the story telling side like the socially conscious ‘Dear Mr. President’, and ‘Rich Girls’ with its devilish solo organ, but even in this last one, relationships are doomed, ‘Rich girls will break’a your heart and/Poor girls will take’a your money’.
The album ends with a Elton John-esque melody ‘Tighter’ which could be the only note of regret of the whole album: ‘Why didn’t I/Hold you tighter than tighter/How could I be so wrong/You can’t hold on/to what is already gone.’
I would say that the album does not totally give justice to what their enthusiastic and energetic live performances are, but that would be true for a lot of bands.
If the whole album was recorded in Fitz’ s living room, I would not be surprised if they were all dressed-up in tight black suits and sparking dress each day for recording, this is how much respect they pay to their hybrid music heavily anchored in their musical ascendancies, how seriously they take their soul-influenced indie pop.
You can stream the whole album here: