Review Summary: "Look at my eyes, Faye. One of them is a fake cause I lost it in an accident. Since then, I’ve been seeing the past in one eye and the present in the other, so I thought I could only see patches of reality, never the whole picture..."
The Seatbelts' third full-length album,
Cowboy Bebop Blue, is simply amazing. Whoever was in charge of marketing knew what they were doing; released one week to the day after the show's final episode (when its effects were undoubtedly still reverberating across the space-time continuum), this album boasts the most emotional collection of songs in the entire soundtrack and includes about twenty minutes more material than
Cowboy Bebop and
No Disc.
The final song of the show is the first track of the album. Supplanting the down but still energetic--optimistic, even--"The Real Folk Blues" for the end credits of Episode 26 is the thoroughly downbeat "Blue", commencing with the somber notes of an acapella chorus and leading into a much-subdued electric guitar for texture, with the immensely talented Mai Yamane on vocals. Lyrically, this song is a poetic take on death, capturing the beauty and relief of shuffling off this mortal coil through lines such as "Never seen a bluer sky / Yeah I can feel it reaching out / and moving closer" and "Things have turned a deeper shade of blue / and images that might be real / maybe illusion / keep flashing on and off". Rising to a peak with sustained cries of "Free! / Wanna be free! / Gonna be free!", lightly accented by church bells and a crescendo that fits the rising intensity of an impending final release, the song hits its apex and returns to a quiet final verse, noting that "Everything is clearer now" and likening a beautiful death to the waking from a dream. This track is magnificent and a fine way to kick off the album.
The next couple tracks complement "Blue" quite nicely. "Words That We Couldn't Say" is a flamenco-style ballad with Steve Conte singing about a past life and living with the regret of losing the one you love. This segues into the smooth Latin jazz number "Autumn in Ganymede" with its steady, driving bassline and brass section playing verses and a very hooky refrain, accompanied by light guitar licks and an electric piano harmonizing underneath it all. This ain't your high-octane bebop; this makes for a much more relaxed listen.
The novelties here are hit or miss. "Mushroom Hunting" is a fun jazzy romp through "Africa, Mexico, Sicily, Tijuana / India, Osaka, Indo-ne-si-a". "Go Go Cactus Man" is an Ennio Morricone-inspired wild west tune that fans will recognize as Andy's theme, replete with twanging jaw harp, whistling, and blaring guitar. "Chicken Bone" is quirky electropop with absurd lyrics about eating chicken with cajun sauce; it's not unlike Ed's other themes, but it does start to lose its appeal over its nearly five minutes of run-time. And "The Real Man" is the most chaotic song on any of The Seatbelts' albums, shrieking in dissonance while its electro-breaks crash a little too brightly overhead. Add to this an impromptu bass, blaring brass on every first beat, and grating sound effects and the entire thing comes off convoluted, compressed, and way too busy.
"N.Y. Rush" is an alternate take of "Rush" from the first album, performed by the Seatbelts' New York crew. The Americans play their part well, also contributing to the suitably blue jazz number "Adieu", with top-notch vocals from Emily Bindiger. They nail it on "Farewell Blues" too, another slow, mellow jazz/blues track with soul, played to perfection. In fact, their only misstep comes on the whimsical "Flying Teapot", which sounds like a disjointed Disney song. It takes a couple listens for this one to find its feet, but even then something sounds off.
My favorite track is the alternative rock "Call Me, Call Me", which (once again) owes its melodies to The Verve (compare the vocals with "One Day" and the chorus with "Lucky Man", and tell me the sweeping strings featured at 3:36 aren't a reference to "Bittersweet Symphony"). As they did on "The Real Folk Blues", The Seatbelts improve on the original(s) by amping up the volume and adding layers, altering the arrangement, and playing well enough to make more of an impression than all of the parts individually. In many ways, this song encapsulates the style and ethos of 90s alt rock (and Britpop especially), and its use at a pivotal moment in the TV show lends it such magnitude that you can't help but feel something.
In all this is a very good album and its critical praises are well deserved. The best songs here deliver in a big way, but what makes this album truly stand out is its consistency. There is power in these songs and, apart from the gripes mentioned above, each track flows easily into the next and carries the same energy forward to the grand finale, the bonus track "See You Space Cowboy", which is an alternate, more laid-back take on "The Real Folk Blues" with the chorus sung in Japanese this time. But rather than creating tension through a gradual build-up towards the song's end, it's relieved by implying the build-up with fills and an ascending progression and then dropping the instruments one-by-one for a natural fade-out.
In keeping with the theme and tone established by its title track,
Blue begins at the end and explores the ups and downs of all that came before. And like each episode of the show it ends with the same words and the same song, although performed differently to indicate that although our understanding of it has changed, life's journey will continue onward. "Life is just a dream, you know / that's never ending", and as life goes on, we must remember that each new experience we encounter is just another episode in our own lives. It's a Romantic notion, that, and one that transcends the genres of music and storytelling. It's a work which becomes a new genre itself.
See You Space Cowboy ...
