Review Summary: McLaren delivers a one-of-a-kind high concept LP: genre bending and emotionally affecting, but bears the burden of anachronism and cliche' in its age.
Of all the producers of New York's 1980's art scene, Malcolm McLaren may be the most distinct. Certainly the most ambitious. Perhaps the most mad. While he's better known for his work masterminding the Sex Pistols, McLaren invested considerable time as an independent producer: exploring wilder ideas for more curious fans. Fans, being the title of his most distinctive release.
The album tells the story of an intoxicating love affair between a 19th century American soldier and a mysterious Japanese Geisha. He is simply a man. Imperfect and determined. But she is Jojo San. She is Madame Butterfly. She is the untouchable, the ecstatic, the elegant ideal.
As our leads are introduced atop dancing drum machines and synthesized woodwinds the narrator lets go of the reins with a nod to his love: "take it away Jojo." And like a diamond on the horizon you hear it: the angelic 'Un Bel Di Vedremo.'
Opera.
Thrust into your ears with an honest, disarming earnestness. Yes, this is a radical retelling of the operatic classic: Madame Butterfly. One which largely sidesteps the anachronistic pitfalls of the genre by casting it in two or three *different* genres at the same time. The album is laden with synthesized R&B and punchy art house hip hop that are juxtaposed against the alien allure of the operatic choruses. It's an experiment that sounds doomed to fail, but by unifying the sound around shared themes of romance and yearning, with a consistently cool, confident tone, McLaren breaks down these genre barriers and crafts a musical chimera.
It isn't a simple matter of storytelling, but the production and arrangements that surround it. That frame it. That recontextualize it. A then-modern take on 19th century operatic classics rendered in the vivid colors of the penultimate decade of the 20th century. In it, love and temptation burn like arcs of lightning across our delicate garden hearts rendered in smoldering guitar and sharp synthesizers. As the allure courses through you, pulsing drum machines burst like thunderclaps overhead. While the love story plays out between spoken word passages and sweeping operatic choruses, the lyricism humanizes the enigmatic Geisha, injecting her with human desires, and grounding the lofty storytelling in firm, relatable terms:
"Call me fool, call me stupid,"
"Bend my arrow, kill this cupid..."
To hear such vulnerability from the Geisha, the vivid and colorful Butterfly, is both disarming and fascinating. For the Geisha is not simply a woman, but a performer: a celebrity and an ideal. To love her is to yearn for the untouchable. A painful lust that is utterly human, expressed in the title track's call & response hybrid of spoken word and opera:
"I'm sitting in the front row - screaming & yelling with the crowd"
"(Watch the stars, that tremble with love, and with hope)"
"What I want, I must have, so I make myself go mad"
Leveraging the cultural clout and star-like allure of the Geisha as an allegory for modern celebrity worship is this record's unique narrative success. The unreachable, para-social nature of the lovers' relationship is the glue that holds all the disparate pieces together. Not just the classical, operatic pieces, but McLaren's own musings on the loquacious lust & feverish fandom within his own New York art scene are equally important aspects of this album's collage of human experience. By excising passages of classical opera & inserting them in sharply crafted, off kilter synthpop compositions, McLaren captures the energy exchange between audience and artist: framed as romance. In doing so, he recontextualizes operatic 'high art' as the same slick slice of hormonal human humors displayed by the albums heated hip hop verses. This adds a brilliant layer of meta-narrative to the album that makes it uniquely 'McLaren.'
It isn't a perfect synthesis, however, given how clumsily the elements of each genre can clash. The plodding instrumentals of 'Boys Chorus' are little more than a sticky, laborious playing field for McLaren's spoken word rambling. The angelic opera passages threaten to redeem the track until McLaren tears them down with his own verses on boyish lethargy. The following track, 'Lauretta,' fares little better, dragging down the beautiful opera performances with trite daytime TV synthesizer loops. For all of it's thematic consistency, the constant gear shifts between haughty operatics and sneering art school hip hop sometimes sound more jarring than revelatory. And a number of the drum machine loops and synth hooks sound painfully dated - undercutting the album's attempt at a modernist retelling of classical art.
However, for every misstep McClaren takes on 'Fans,' there is a rousing success. 'Death Of Butterfly,' the album's closer, features a meticulous balance of synthesized woodwinds, break beats, and heavenly vocals - juxtaposed by the narrator's frank remarks on romantic regret. Ripped straight out of his war diary, he laments his decision to abandon his brightest Geisha love - a love that may never have been - out of matrimonial and militaristic duty. He has another life, and another wife, in another world. With an alien intensity, the impassioned operatic verses of 'Tu Tu Piccolo' call in response to the lover's regret:
"For your pure eyes, Butterfly dies..."
"Because you can go beyond the sea..."
"Goodbye, little love! Go, play, play..."
And play is precisely what McClaren did on this album. While it *is* a mad stroke of genius, it falls far short of perfection, coming together as a work that feels overlong despite being curiously short: at just over 30 minutes. And within that brief runtime, there are simply too many duds to warrant a higher score. It feels as if it would've worked better as an experimental EP than a full length release. But the cross-genre concept McLaren plays with is just too brilliant to ignore - even if it is garish and clumsy at times. Because no one could know more on the hazards of love than the enigmatic Geisha, Jojo San, and the eccentric New York artist barking her story from the rooftops, romancing the crowd below.
