Mike Patton
Peeping Tom
Ipecac Records
Having
no
style is a world away from not having style. Mike Patton certainly has plenty of style all his own, but the man-who is just as happy singing backup on an a capella Bjork album, shouting from under a gas mask, distorting his voice to the tune of avant garde
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jazz or hanging out with experimental rappers-refuses to conform to any one idea of what his own music should sound like. Often this works to everyone's advantage. Occasionally it falls a little flat.
Armed with an idea and a few mp3s Patton set out to make a collaborative concept album that fans have been waiting some six years for. Taking both title and theme from an obscure early '60s thriller,
Peeping Tom
is an exercise in dissociative alliance. Files were composed, recorded and e-mailed to artists with a simple request: no discussion, no cooperation, just a finished song.
The results are a mixture of highly electronic pop tunes with the signatures of artists like Rahzel, Dan the Automator, Kool Keith, Massive Attack and Kid Koala impressed into them. The collaborators play with the music to create unique sounds and ideas, mixing the diversity of styles mix. The narrative themes that Patton has played with so well in outings like Lovage or Mr. Bungle are replaced with simple choruses that, at times, rely too heavily on the music to pull them up.
Peeping Tom
does have moments that are so good you almost begin to wish the song wouldn't end, or would at least skip itself back to the beginning about 10 times before going letting the album go on. "Sucker," which features the apparently not-so-sugary-sweet Norah Jones, is one hell of a postmodern duet. Beginning with devious sexy laughter and a processed wonky beat the track breaks in with a slighted Patton vowing revenge on the unheard woman. The moment Jones' voice makes its stand with "There's one born every minute...What makes you think you're my only lover? The truth kinda hurts, don't it, motherfucker," she's taken over and put him in his place. It takes a strong man to let a woman take his style and improve it, but that is, after all, the hope in good collaboration.
