REVIEW: Rockapella, Rockapella 2 (J-Bird)
- Paul Andersen
If your only exposure to Rockapella is from those omnipresent commercials for Folgers and Almond Joy, please suspend whatever negative feelings you may have gained from hearing them too much, and open your mind to what the human voice can do, on its own, by itself.
The liner notes state that all the sounds contained within this album were produced by "the voices and appendages of Rockapella," but you will swear that ain't so after hearing the amazing things this five-member group can do with the most basic of musical instruments, the human voice. Of course, having a human percussion machine (in the form of Jeff Thacher) doesn't hurt things.
Thacher used to amuse himself as a child by making up sounds for the toys he was playing with, and now as an adult he continues to make up sounds, only the toys have been replaced by a shedful of percussion instruments. It has been said that fans come up to him after shows to see if there is a hidden tape recorder or something else that might explain what he does. The only magic is what he can do with his voice and body.
Unlike a lot of a cappella groups who do *sans instrument* arrangements of other people's songs, Rockapella writes their own material. Melodically rich and surprisingly swinging (thanks to Thacher and bass voice Barry Carl, who make a fine rhythm section), the songs on Rockapella 2 are mainly relationship-oriented, which at least to me keeps it in the tradition of the doo-wop street corner image that I've always had in my mind. Of course, a lot more goes into it than a group of guys under a street lamp.
The current single is the album's only cover, a version of Squeeze's "Tempted" that, if there is any justice in the world, should shoot up the charts. In a lot of ways, the current wave of boy bands (think Backstreet Boys) are a marketed version based on what Rockapella does naturally, without the trappings of image and manufactured cuteness. Needless to say, groups like Rockapella (and others, like the Blenders and the legendary Persuasions, who have kept a cappella alive) totally blow them away.
"Tempted" is a perfect example of what these five do. They manage to stay quite true to the original, including the vocal go-rounds before the choruses, yet using words instead of instruments to move the song forward, they impart even more meaning to the lyrics of Difford and Tilbrook, adding yearning to the equation in this questioning of the pitfalls in the road to monogamy.
Stylistically, Rockapella goes from the Latin-tinged "Doorman Of My Heart" to the classic doo-wop of "Where Would We Be?" with stops in between that reflect the many faces of pop music. And for those fans that want it all, there are two Folger's commercial tracks tacked on at the end.
Hey, ya gotta pay the bills, right?
