Jeff Beck and Johnny Depp: 18 review – a dull display of colossal self-pity
I t's perfectly possible to dissever the fine art from the artist. Jimmy Page's behaviour does non render the Led Zeppelin catalogue unlistenable; cinemas are now showing a film jubilant the life of Elvis, which rather glosses over the fact that Priscilla Beaulieu became his girlfriend when she was 14, but the music yet sounds spectacular.
Jeff Brook's collaboration with Johnny Depp, though, is an odd case. Partly because while a British courtroom decided Depp had beaten his now ex-wife, Amber Heard, he then won his example on the aforementioned event in a U.s. court, then people can (and accept) taken diametrically opposing stances on his actions. And partly considering this record follows and then closely on the heels of that second example, with social media still live with vituperative annotate on it, xviii is an uncomfortable listen, ofttimes giving the sense of Depp taking revenge.
Ordinarily, a new Jeff Brook album would laissez passer without much comment in most quarters. It's the presence of Depp that makes it noteworthy. And while the fact that it's been planned for three years protects Beck from any accusations of cashing in on headlines to generate sales, the presence of Depp loyalists coming to view their hero playing alongside Beck at his recent shows suggests that 18 will reach a wider audience than any Beck tape for some time. What will they get? Instrumental guitar pieces, of grade – perfectly pleasant but wholly unnecessary versions of Davy Spillane's Midnight Walker, and Don't Talk (Put Your Head on My Shoulder) and Caroline, No, from the Beach Boys' Pet Sounds – which sound custom made for montages of gulls swooping above cliffs on the Travel Channel, no matter how gorgeously pellucid Beck's playing is. They'll get some serviceable covers sung by Depp – the Miracles' Ooo Baby Baby (his best performance, in an unlikely falsetto), Dennis Wilson's Time, the Everly Brothers' Let It Be Me, and an entirely redundant version of Marvin Gaye'southward What'southward Goin' On.
And they will get a handful of tracks that are apparently meant to play to Depp'southward image, and his own cocky-perception, including two he wrote. Those two – unsurprisingly, given the quality of the other compositions – are the weakest musically, if the most revealing lyrically. Sad Motherfuckin' Parade is little more than than a minimal bass riff with Brook's guitar squealing away on top and Depp snarling a barely coherent rant: "Yous're sitting at that place like a canis familiaris with a vii-year itch / You lot keep serving upwards fast to make a barrel of fish." All of which is punctuated past a downpitched vocalism intoning "Big time … motherfucker" every bit a percussive accessory. It's juvenile and hare-brained and just not very adept.
This Is a Vocal for Miss Hedy Lamarr is better musically – its standard post-Beatles piano carol structure is disrupted by the drums (played past Depp) beating a military tattoo for its first 90 seconds, rather than going directly for the mid-paced plod. Brook's endmost solo, too, is the best on the record. Merely the lyrics. Oh honey. Actor and inventor Lamarr, one supposes, is beingness used equally a cipher for Depp: misunderstood, abused, unfairly traduced: "Erased by the same globe that made her a star / Spun out of beauty, trapped by its web." Of grade, Lamarr went into seclusion rather than making an album to win public sympathy.
The remaining covers are equally pointed. John Lennon's Isolation and Janis Ian's Stars both lay on the pity-poor-me shtick, though the latter might be the all-time track on eighteen, partly because Janis Ian is a much more than nuanced writer about the vicissitudes of fame than Johnny Depp, and partly because Depp's vocal performance – an unmannered, gentle baritone – suits the material.
And then there are the 2 horrorshows – versions of Killing Joke's The Death and Resurrection Testify and the Velvet Underground'south Venus in Furs. The erstwhile simply lacks the menace and terror that are Killing Joke's stock in trade – it's like cosplay, so clearly almost projecting danger, which is an odd thing to want to project given that Depp's legal travails have concerned whether he really is dangerous. Venus in Furs is an odd choice for the aforementioned reason – why at present, of all times, would he choose to perform a song about sado-masochism? It is disastrously recast equally goth metal, losing all the creeping dread of the original. Where Lou Reed really did come across equally tired and weary, Depp just sounds like a bored robot.
Information technology's to Beck'southward credit that solitary among the guitar heroes of the 1960s UK R&B boom, he has non retreated into coffee-tabular array blues. His career is replete with startling changes of management, and unusual collaborators, which probably accounts for him being revered past musicians, but never really achieving stardom to match his skill. But xviii is a peculiar and hugely uneven record. And it would be a peculiar and hugely uneven record even if Depp had never been near a courtroom in his life.
Source: https://www.theguardian.com/music/2022/jul/14/jeff-beck-and-johnny-depp-18-review-a-dull-display-of-colossal-self-pity
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