Donovan
Beat Cafe

When you talk about having bad feelings: it might seem like nonsense, indeed, it is, but even before listening to it, this album left me puzzled - ugly cover, anonymous and predictable title; moreover, "Beat Café" is dated 2004, the same year when Gordon Lightfoot released his last and very faded album, "Harmony": there is no connection between these two artists except for the fact that they are contemporaries in the music industry and my great affection for both. Despite its mediocrity, however, that was at least a decent album; "Beat Café," for me at least, was instead a powerful slap in the face, even more stinging because it was unexpected; with all the skepticism and doubts, more or less grounded, that one might have, I would never, ever have imagined that Donovan could produce an album like this.

The excellent "Sutras" from eight years prior, needless to say, hadn't stirred the slightest bit of attention around Donovan's name, so the partnership with Rick Rubin ends, and the Scottish artist returns to limbo: in the following years, some minor releases occur: a couple of live albums, a children's album, "Pied Piper" (2002) largely composed of songs already released in "For Little Ones" and "HMS Donovan" and a demo dating back to 1964, then in 2004 the "big" return: "Beat Café": joined by two long-established veterans like drummer Jim Keltner and friend and former member of the Pentangle, Danny Thompson on bass. Despite this, "Beat Café" is a terrible, sluggish, avoidable, senseless album - in short, to put it with a refined French phrase, it truly sucks. It truly sucks because there is nothing, absolutely nothing of that colorful and refined sound rainbow that has always, in many different forms, constituted Donovan's magic: "Beat Café" is not folk, it's not rock, it's not pop; it's simply the delirium of an artist who, on the brink of sixty, wants to play at being someone he's never been.

The initial "Love Floats", which incidentally is one of the two salvageable songs from this album, is quite telling: the piece is stuffed with bizarre whispered vocalizations that almost seem to mock "Barabajagal (Love Is Hot)", Danny Thompson's bass is prominently featured, as throughout the album, yet this forced sensuality absolutely doesn't work: the song is quite catchy and engaging, but hearing a Donovan devoid of the brilliance of his best years mumbling with a sexy tone possibly believing himself to be the alter ego of Brian Ferry leaves one decidedly puzzled and embarrassed, and in fact, once this passable parenthesis is closed "Beat Café" reveals itself for what it truly is: an ordeal. "Yin My Yang" is the other "highlight" of the album, and follows the same coordinates of the opener but in a more sober and convincing manner, resulting in a pleasant piece, although aside from the drums and bass it is musically hollow, and it is precisely this minimal style that fails to convince at all: "Beat Café" is intangible and devoid of ideas, the remaining ten songs are a tedious succession of insipid lullabies, perhaps worthy of a supermarket relaxation compilation: "Poorman's Sunshine", "Whirwind", limp and deflating despite the absurd pretense of being sensual, the third-hand swing of "Beat Café", the generic blues rock of "Lord Of The Universe", "The Cuckoo", a traditional song that, if interpreted by the Donovan of three decades earlier and not by this bizarre caricature, might have been intriguing. Besides being irritably lackluster, "Beat Café" also perplexes due to Donovan's contrived and theatrical singing that borders on ridiculous, completely opposed to the spontaneity that had always distinguished him; in the rhythmic "The Question" his nonsensical vocalizations reach levels of ugliness and gaudiness beyond belief, even in "Lover O Lover", a track inexplicably dredged up from "Love Is Only Feeling" from 1981, he almost sounds like Darth Vader's gasps, and I'm not kidding; this piece, if it weren't for an unbearably heavy narcoleptic weight, would be almost comical, comedy that turns into pure embarrassment in "Two Lovers", describable as a tirade of new-age clichés uttered with the demeanor of a dead cat against the backdrop of any Buddha-bar music.

One star. Severely insufficient, this is the final judgment on "Beat Café": after the poetic refinement of the lyrics in "Sutras", this sudden explosion of bizarre and out-of-time sensuality sounds even more inappropriate and inexplicable. This album, an indigestible and irritating brick, would be annoying even as the background of a thermal spa massage session, and the tragedy is that the highest target "Beat Café" can aim for is precisely that: from whatever angle you judge it, musically, textually, stylistically, this album is an empty box, in fact filled with hot air, boredom and arrogance, in which Donovan appears as fake and expressionless as in the portrait on the cover.