Cover of Natty Dread

NATTY DREAD

Year Of Release: 1974
Record rating = 9
Overall rating = 12

Where the big Rasta guy becomes a prophet, once and for all. Plus, some cool reggae grooves, but you know that already.
Best song: REBEL MUSIC (3 O'CLOCK ROADBLOCK)

Track listing: 1) Lively Up Yourself; 2) No Woman No Cry; 3) Them Belly Full (But We Hungry); 4) Rebel Music (3 O'Clock Roadblock); 5) So Jah Say; 6) Natty Dread; 7) Bend Down Low; 8) Talkin' Blues; 9) Revolution.

Truly an excellent album, but I wouldn't know if it's really worth the trouble to select Natty Dread as Marley's best album, not to mention 'ultimate reggae album of all time', as some put it. This here review will be eminently positive, of course (if ever you thought reggae as a genre was worthwhile at all, there's no possibility of your disliking Natty Dread), but I do think that some of the elements that made earlier Marley/Tosh collaborations so unique are missing here, mainly due to the fact that Tosh himself is missing - Natty Dread presents us with a radically different version of the Wailers, without Tosh and Bunny Livingstone, on here replaced by Touter (keyboards) and Al Anderson on lead guitar. And I miss the beautiful lead playing of Tosh, as well as his acute, breathtaking compositions - the Wailers were never the same after the guy left.
That said, there exists a simple explanation of this utmost reverance for Natty Dread: it was the first Marley album released after Clapton'd introduced the 'reggae craze' with his version of 'I Shot The Sheriff', and thus, the first reggae album to which critics at the time payed any serious attention. And it stayed that way forever. History is made up of these little accidents and coincidences, you know...

In any case, there was indeed a lot of stuff to praise on the album. It is less introspective and personal than Marley's preceding albums, and milks the Rastafarian vibe for all its worth - if anything, it could be the 'ultimate reggae album' just because it concentrates so much on the general spiritual disciplines of Kingston. Almost every track on here deals with Jah, ganja, dreadlocks, and lots of stuff that one really needs further education on in order to acquire a full understanding of the album. Me definitely not being an expert in Rastaman vibrations (a fascinating topic, no doubt, but not the one I'd wish to spend extra time on studying), I'll just try to concentrate on the more general aspects of the album - the music, that is.

The most famous song on here is the Vincent Ford penned 'No Woman No Cry', but surprisingly (or unsurprisingly) it's also the least typical number on the album. It's just a nostalgic love ballad - a beautiful, endearing ballad that revels in its 'humility' and does indeed remind one of Bob Dylan, to whom they were already beginning to compare Marley at the time. Bob's vocals are so gentle and captivating that it's hard to imagine a love ballad with a higher percent of sincerity, and the chorus will stay in your head forever, brilliantly simple as it is.

But everything else is philosophized to a huge degree. In fact, all of the other songs are pretty similar in vibe - well-performed reggae shuffles (is that an allowed word combination? Oh well, I like it) that seem to only be divided according to the 'pessimistic/optimistic' issue: certain songs draw on darker, sadder aspects of human existence, some draw on easier aspects of said existence. Thus, the album begins with the driving 'Lively Up Yourself', a five-minute long analog of a tribal chant that slowly grows on you, expanding its solemnity from the ominous bassline onto the not any less ominous brass section until you start to get an uneasy feeling of the Voodoo power descending on you or something. That said, basically the song is quite friendly.

But then there's also 'Them Belly Full (But We Hungry)', with a title that says it all - 'a hungry mob is a angry mob'. If 'Lively Up Yourself' is more like a song of rejoicement that Bob addresses to his people, this one is more like a trademark anthem of the Rastafarians. Pretty catchy, too (well, almost everything on here is pretty catchy, so I'd better not mention that word again). And then there's 'Rebel Music (3 O'Clock Roadblock)', where Marley hints at a story about his being detained by cops for carrying 'my little herb stalk'. The closest Bob gets to an acute personal statement on here, that is - and even if the song goes on for almost seven minutes, it hardly ever gets boring. Personally, I just get all kinds of shivers down my spine at hearing Marley and the band go 'Aaaaaaaaaahh... rebel music!' in the chorus; and, by the way, the backing vocals are provided by the I-Threes. Not that you'd care.

Other highlights include the pompous, stately 'So Jah Seh', where Marley speculates on Biblical imagery in the most portentous way possible and comes out with a winner; the lightweight, humorous 'Bend Down Low' which is a nice breather after all the serious stuff; the near-perfect hobo anthem 'Talkin' Blues', where Bob relies a bit too much on lyrical cliches, I think, but it's passionate and sincere all the same; and, of course, the great anti-violence anthem 'Revolution', which, I hope, nobody will mistake for the opposite. The only track I'm not at all fond of is the title track, which sounds a bit stupid twenty-five years on: especially if you're not a big connoisseur of the reggae culture in general. Apart from lacking that shiver-sending pathos of the other tracks, it's also way too repetitive even for a reggae number. Then again, a deeper appreciation of said culture will probably help you assimilate even that one.

Overall, even if Natty Dread has been overrated over the years, it's still one of the most essential albums of 1974 - Marley might have produced albums of a more diverse and consistent nature, but there's no denying that the album had announced the arrival of a new musical style with the same power as, say, Deep Purple In Rock had announced the arrival of heavy metal four years earlier. It is an essential purchase, therefore, even for a non-reggae fan, if only for historical reasons.