McPullish
Back to Mount Zion Riddim (Charlie’s)Forty-seven minutes and one bassline: Get comfortable. McPullish’s latest dub trial is a laudable effort on the surface, incorporating eight comparable reggae vox-men who croon and wax Rastafari for Zion and peace. Problem is, it leaves no footprints. Reggae front-runner Luciano belts “Just Hold On” with little sense of urgency, and Chezidek’s opener, “I Won’t Change,” flows so seamlessly into the Judge-spotted “Education” that recognizing any deviation between tracks becomes a chore. It’s not all gutters, though. Aimann Raad offers an against-all-odds refresher, half-singing, half-rapping his way through “Days I Remember.” Timmy Garofalo’s saxophone work pulls the redundancy through “Aerophonic Dub.” Three closers, “Dub Change I,” “Just Dub On,” and “Zion Dub,” offered as stripped-down cousins to their vocalized predecessors, break off in a blur. The talent’s here, but Back to Mount Zion eventually gets lost in its own Riddim.
This article appears in August 8 • 2008.