Scritti Politti
Cupid & Psyche 85 [Deluxe Edition]
ROUGH TRADE
For those who’ve wondered why Green Gartside took Scritti Politti from its funky forcefield of raggamuffin socialism and smarty-pants semiotics into the realm of shiny, Fairlight-driven soul, the answer comes down to something Eric Idle once sang: “You can keep your Marxist ways, ’cause it’s only just a phase, it’s money that makes the world go round.” Seduced by the hermetically sealed sound and vision of the chic, sleek American R&B of the early ’80s, Gartside fashioned the tone of 1985’s Cupid & Psyche 85—with renowned orchestrator Arif Mardin and the crème of NYC session musicians—around a set of irresistibly contagious melodies, crisp drum programming, and thumb-popping bass lines. Sophisticated and way fuller (wall-to-wall crowded as it is with its countless contributors) than the sparer, jittery leaps of Songs to Remember, Green then pitched his already-high, soft, diction-conscious vocals—the centerpiece of Scritti’s debut album—into the red of helium-filled hysteria.
Aside from the slow, halting dancehall of “The Word Girl,” every multi-layered, overly aerated, FX-filled moment of Cupid & Psyche is sped-up to 78 RPM and infused with a steel-and-cotton sheen, making Gartside’s hyperventilating, Foucault-esque pronouncements on romance, war, and politics into a manic sugar rush. As a series of songs dedicated to elevating R&B into a dizzying stratosphere, that this all manages to be the most amazingly unique take on blue-eyed soul since Todd Rundgren’s A Wizard, a True Star a decade prior—from the fever dream of “Wood Beez” to the ardent, provocative “Absolute”—comes down to the clever conviction of Gartside, Mardin, and their occasional writing partner David Gamson. Always wise beyond his ears, the lyricist created some of pop music’s tartest, most sensationally semantic, literate couplets (“With his hammer and his popsicle, they put him in the hospital” from 1982’s “Asylums in Jerusalem” sticks out), while the composer babied each phrase as if fondling spun sugar.
Yet though brilliant in its songcraft and lyricism, Cupid & Psyche 85 is nearly unlistenable all the way through. The dilemma here is something that David Bowie had considered in regard to his Never Let Me Down album. Only two years after Gartside’s racing, zealously lustrous C&P85—including the rare remixes found on this newly released deluxe edition—Bowie, too, fell under the spell of the Fairlight and all things overly programmable, and turned what could’ve been a charming, art-soul album into a plastic, cluttered mess. Knowing this toward the end of his life, however, Bowie ordered his team to tear the synthetic polish from this 1987 disaster, re-record it more organically and analog-y, and bring out his melodies’ more touch-sensitive eloquence. Likewise, if anyone is to go forward with re-invigorating the Scritti Politti catalog—and I insist they do, as 1988’s Provision and 1999’s Anomie & Bonhomie feature moments of crystalline brilliance stuck under mounds of over-production—we must save Green Gartside from himself and strip this material down.
