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Rating:
Santana, 20 years later.
If I had to describe I Mother Earth with a newspaper headline, I would use these words. But we know that headlines rarely fully describe reality, distorting it with their logic bent towards synthesis. It's better to continue, then.
They are four (the Tanna brothers on drums and guitar, Bruce Gordon on bass, some guy named Edwin singing) and they come from Toronto, Canada. For this debut, they even enlisted Mike Clink, who previously produced Guns n' Roses, Megadeth, and Motley Crue.
The more important thing is the release year of "Dig": 1993. Right in the middle of the grunge era, but not just that. Indie, crossover, the debut of Tool, the craziness of seeing the Butthole Surfers at the top of the charts, produced by John Paul! In this fertile ground, I Mother Earth moves, convinced though that the best of the '70s is at the beginning, not the end. Often crossing into the '60s. And if Santana is the main source they draw from (the one of the first two phenomenal albums), there are also references to hard psychedelia, as in "Undone" and "The Universe In You", long jams that would have pleased both Jane's Addiction and God Machine.
There are also punk-funk stabs (no, not Talking Heads), "Production" and "Basketball": the school is that of the Red Hot Chili Peppers (Mother's Milk-era), the speed is the same as a Federer first serve. And if the central core almost always remains a very expanded grunge, around it gravitates several electrons: not total crossover, but almost. Whispering, they tell us they want to do art rock.
"Dig", ultimately, is a successful album, a product of the times that were, missing a couple of tracks to be called a classic or a masterpiece. The same unpleasant feeling arises when analyzing the career of I Mother Earth, who always seem a penny short of a dollar.
A pity, but I advise seeing the glass half full. Or rather, listening to it.
RATING 8
Tracklist Lyrics and Videos
02 Levitate (04:57)
Feel Heavy
Once Felt it... Hard
Question an answer
For a thousand days
Give birth to the Earth
Then let it drift away
Open and flow
Just swinging forever
Making love to the ground
Because it just feels better
It ain't easy
Drink it in
Think a while... Spit
There's both shining and darkness
Yet they share a day
Was there a man on a cross
Or was it just a fake
Even in shame
You can't hide your growth
Though the butterfly flies
He's sinking like a stone
The killing sun
It hurts my eyes
And comes hard
Onto my skin
And as I find shade
From tree to tree
I live to learn
To dig down deep
I feel the pain
And love the hurt
I don't complain
Trancing in the grass
Suck it off the world
When you're full of itv Shrug, feel fortunate
Then go where levitation lives
Where agrivation grows
Where sleeping's too hard
On the thinking bone
Intensity is what I need
To suffer for the pleasure
Its heat, hard, life and death
Living all together
In a small room
Full of me and my friends
Trying to find the means
To justify the end
06 Production (04:00)
This man
May have a shitload
To prove
He's got to settle a score
Against the groove
Infinite orgasm
Like endless joy and pain
Thunder to my ears
Like a holy rain
An aural wall of waking
Awash in purple paint
And a digging
Of the flowers in your yard
Electric rays of healing
Intensify the feeling of hatred
Towards the things you say
I ain't
Fear a man-child
His soul and seman
Pathetic thoughts he thinks
Forever
Heard you caused a landslide
Walking home
Soon slide the man-child
Under your coat
Product of your generation
Your masturbation
A master plan
A holy man
Infanticide
Decaying minds
Mass corruption
The product
And its production
10 Basketball (05:12)
I'm barefoot, I'm bristling
Solitude
On my rooftop, solid
Like there's no more stars
Staring at me - ah
Who's out there?
I can see the girl
Across the way
She can't see me
And I touch myself
With just a little bit of confusion
But I'm all alone
And that's all that matters
It's the chance
I'm taking
It's the danger I like
Within this
Euphoric kind of feeling
It's just a sex high
It's just a sex high
There ain't no waterfalls and
There ain't no paths of grass here
Just a casual nod
And basketball
I don't mind
Cause I'm still alive
All thoughts and feelings
Under my ceiling
This city
Holds a sensual tension
This city
Screams for more affection
Affection hitting it from all directions
I'm just a kid
With the past of a grown man
Sold my sex
In public places
To junked out fags
With yellow eyes
Running
For their Times Square lives
Hit the river, swam in shit
But never
Tried to open my eyes
In the dark
I see dead young faces
Fix me up
And keep your Zen
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