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World Party
Dumbing Up
(Seaview)
First Appeared in The Music Box, May 2006, Volume 13, #5
Written by John Metzger
After the 1997 release of Egyptology, Karl Wallinger’s World Party
collapsed. Not only had the album received minimal support from Chrysalis
Records — which led Wallinger to void his contract — but the label, along with
most of his backing band, also had snatched a song from the set (She’s the
One) without his knowledge and used it as a platform for turning Robbie
Williams into a pop star. Wallinger tried his best to persevere by putting
together Dumbing Up, his fifth outing since leaving The Waterboys, but
further tragedy struck when his manager and friend Steve Fargnoli succumbed to
cancer and Wallinger himself suffered an aneurysm.
Having fully regained his health, Wallinger subsequently fought for and won
back the rights to his complete catalogue, all of which is in the midst of being
reissued. In addition, he has reformed World Party for an extensive tour and has
dusted off his most recent outing Dumbing Up for a proper release. (It
previously had been issued only in the U.K.). Unfortunately, although the newly
reconfigured incarnation of Dumbing Up boasts two additional songs as
well as a two-hour DVD containing videos for World Party’s numerous singles, the
collection isn’t necessarily the best foundation upon which to construct a
career resurgence.
In essence, 20 years after launching World Party, Wallinger remains committed
to bringing his influences to a younger generation. He’s still quite good at it,
too — at times, he’s positively brilliant — but what he faces is a musical
landscape that is quite different from that in which World Party was birthed. In
1990, when he created his finest outing Goodbye Jumbo, his appropriations
sounded remarkably fresh, and although, at the time, the Rolling Stones, Bob
Dylan, former Beatle Paul McCartney, and Electric Light Orchestra’s Jeff Lynne
were beginning to show signs of awakening from a long slumber that found them
slipping closer to irrelevancy, they were hardly in top form. In recent years,
Dylan, McCartney, and the Stones have all concocted critically acclaimed albums,
and love him or hate him, Lynne has become a commercially successful producer.
Simply put, churning out derivative fare (as Wallinger is prone to do) no longer
is enough to hold anyone’s attention for very long.
Too often on Dumbing Up, Wallinger plays it safe, and as a result he
frequently sounds as if he is constricting himself by working from a
predetermined template of what a World Party album should be. The opening
Another 1000 Years is drenched in The Beatles’ psychedelic sojourns, and
melodically speaking, it bears a ridiculously striking resemblance to Baby
You’re a Rich Man. Elsewhere, High Love is akin to George Harrison
supporting Mick Jagger; Til I Got You finds the folk song that lurks
beneath so many of Electric Light Orchestra’s overly produced overtures; and
Here Comes the Future laces a modern-day, R&B excursion with Santana-esque
guitar. For the record, the entirety of the outing is well-constructed, but
considering that Wallinger merely is touching upon all of his usual bases, the
set also feels seriously passé.
Even so, there are two definitive moments on Dumbing Up during which
Wallinger performs with the sort of urgency that transformed Goodbye Jumbo
into a minor masterpiece. The first is Who Are You?, a bilious blues-rock
rant in the spirit of Dylan’s Maggie’s Farm; the second is Always on
My Mind, an elongated, Boomtown Rats-style, piano-driven hymn that contains
a perfect blend of idealistic hope and bitter disappointment. Were the rest of
Dumbing Up this emotionally inspired, the album likely would be heralded
as a triumphant return to form. At least the video footage, which plays like a
greatest hits collection, makes up for Dumbing Up’s overall deficiencies. 
Dumbing Up is
available from Amazon.com.
To order, Click Here!
For Canadian orders, please
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Ratings
1 Star: Pitiful
2 Stars: Listenable
3 Stars: Respectable
4 Stars: Excellent
5 Stars: Can't Live Without It!!
Copyright © 2006 The Music Box
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