Parliament
Osmium

THE REVIEW

Parliament are famous not for tracks like "My Automobile", "I Call My Baby Pussycat", "Moonshine Heather" (the highlights of "Osmium"), but for indisputable masterpieces like "Give Up The Funk", "Sir Nose d'Voidoffunk", "Up For The Down Stroke", and so on. Famous indeed...famous in the United States where they were, and in some ways still are, just short of deities, a part of their popular culture; in Italy, they’re quite overlooked. Imagine, then, an album like "Osmium" (1970), shadowed in the group's discography, underrated, and ignored. An almost forgotten album, for many just "the debut album of Parliament", neither here nor there.

Why is it a forgotten album? Because it has a very peculiar sound, which has nothing to do with the sound that George Clinton's crew would develop in the late '70s. Much closer to the early phase of the twin group, Funkadelic, the phase of albums like "Free Your Mind And Your Ass Will Follow" and "Maggot Brain", to be clear. There is affinity, no doubt, but there is also a fundamental difference: the early works of Funkadelic are homogeneous, it’s clear a common thread runs through all the songs. This common thread is missing in Osmium. A blessing and a curse, because it’s true that it makes the album harder to listen to, but it is also true that it characterizes it, perhaps making it unique in the entire discography of Parliament-Funkadelic and related spin-offs (an extensive discography of which I know only a small part, so I allow myself the benefit of the doubt). 

In "Osmium" you go from the driving black-rock of "I Call My Baby Pussycat" (the title says it all) to the wonderfully epic concluding ballad "The Silent Boatman", complete with bagpipes. In this mix, there’s gospel ("Oh Lord Why Lord/Prayer"), some country influences ("Little Ole Country Boy"), there’s doo-woop, reminiscent of The Parliaments’ recent past (to unravel the intricate web of Clinton’s band history, here is not the place) in "My Automobile". There’s all this, here and there there’s a vague parodic intent, certainly a playful tone, and absolutely no common thread. I like it that way.