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Natty
Dread
Bob Marley |
Natty Dread captures Bob Marley's decisive transition from Wailers
band member to auteur, his singing and writing now front and
center, and the revamped band securely reined in to his defiant,
Rastafarian worldview. This 1974 release mirrors the lineup's
more sinewy sound, carved by Al Anderson's spidery guitar fills,
Touter's telegraphic keyboard, the I-Threes' female vocal choruses
and vamping horns--a potent brew that bubbles under his then
most openly political songs. A position paper on the daunting
ghetto realities of Jamaica's Trenchtown, the album reels off
a series of enduring Marley classics and kicks off with the
giddy, sexy reggae anthem, "Lively Up Yourself," with its hilarious
but mysterious spoken fadeout ("What you got in dat bag, dere?").
It continues with the uplifting pep talk in "No Woman No Cry,"
the grim dispatches of "Them Belly Full (But We Hungry)" and
"Rebel Music (3 O'Clock Roadblock)," as well as the exhortations
of the title song and "Revolution." Marley's own dreadlocks
were still just growing in then, but this is nonetheless fully
matured, riveting reggae at its most focused, righteous, and
rhythmically irresistible.
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