new review, old music: wu tang

"...This album has a quality that is rare in rap: quiet. There is enough room in "Careful (Click, Click)" to hear drain grates dripping, feet sliding on pavement, and other odd, icy, city sounds. This all comes behind plaintive lyrics and eerie, droning cries. The quiet, or the space (which reappears at intervals all along the journey), doesn't so much evoke emptiness, but becomes just enough to clear the space and establish a nearly fairy-tale quality in these urban and gothic songs... Yes, I'm biased toward this album. Wu-Tang Clan has ably evoked the ghosts of my past and a longing for the wonder of my childhood—a wonder and a love for cities, and for urban decay. But it doesn't stop there. It has demanded, again, that I mature enough, again, to shed any rose-tinted view of life in the city. I cannot believe that I have been alone in feeling this wonder; and I cannot believe that I will be alone in wandering carefully through the street-worlds of "The W" for a long time to come. And I won't be the only one changed when the time comes for leaving the place, the album, as a more respectful and more adult listener..."









(read the whole over @ Juked)