Tribe - Sleeper

Tribe
Sleeper
Slash/Warner Bros 1993

Produced by John Porter

Personnel:
Janet LaValley - vocals
Terri Barous - keyboards/vocals
Eric Brosius - guitar/vocals
Greg LoPiccolo - bass/vocals
David Penzo - drums

Boston tends to have an earthy sound to its music scene to me. Something organic that permeates everything, from the most spartan of folk (Patty Larkin comes from those parts) to new wave (remember 'Til Tuesday?) and even a band like Tribe, whose presence was dominanat in the area as a buzzworthy mix of influences that evoked references to early New Order, My Bloody Valentine/Curve, and hints of industrial (probably augmented by the use of John Porter behind the production desk, who had worked with NIN and eventually would produce Stabbing Westward) as well as still carrying some of that local bar scene grit under the nails.

While a song like Making a Plan would evince comparison to late 70s David Bowie stylistically, Nevermind is starkly reminiscent Tori Amos circa Under the Pink and Crawl reminds one of Siouxie Sioux circa Israel, the fact is that this album is mostly coherent and establishes itself as a singular thing (instead of just being a bunch of schmucks parading their influences because they have nothing of their own to provide) is pretty commendable.

The title track is a great piece of catchy postmodern rock, as is Dogflower. The fun opener, Miracle of Sound is apparently about getting a good jab at Milli Vanilli, and Supercollider is...well...about going to work on a Supercollider project, and even the standard gloom-pop ballad Nevermind hints that idea-wise, Tribe is not a one-track pony. They'll write about whatever comes to mind, even if it makes little connection to anything else on the album. The musicianship is above par, with particular kudos to Terri Barous for her rather original keyboard sounds and sequences. They are mostly stealthy and layered in a way as to still sound fresh a dozen years later; there is some hints of Eno in there, and that's always good. Also, Eric Brosius provides an understated but varied approach that let's him drop short solos of great phrasing (the Americana in Red Rover stands out) and a decently varied bag of rhythm tricks, as he does on the noisy chorus of Crawl. And Janet LaValley as a vocalist really should have helped propel this band to far bigger heights than it achieved (it acheived relative obscurity outside the greater Boston area), with her made for MTV looks and excellent vocals.

There are some dead ends, like Romeo Poe which comes off faceless and dated, and Sing To Neptune which sounds like a rejected Concrete Blonde cut (but the Kevin Shields-like guitar work in the coda is admirable). The album itself was recorded a little too muddy in spots, and where you can tell the mid-range is sucking in all the dense synths and basslines, it's just frustrating, but it doesn't permeate the whole album, leaving it still largely enjoyable.

This was sadly, their only major label album, and broke up shortly thereafter, with Barous and Brosius going onto doing video game music and LaValley essentially dropping off the face of the planet after attempts to launch a solo career aborted.

You might like this if you like:

Love and Rockets - Earth Sun Moon
Siouxie and the Banshees - Tinderbox
Concrete Blonde - Free
Curve - Doppleganger
Garbage - Bleed Like Me
Letters to Cleo - Aurora Gory Alice