Search - Marcus Miller :: M2

Good, if a little overlong record.

Michael Stack | North Chelmsford, MA USA | 04/25/2005

(4 out of 5 stars)

"Marcus Miller's "M2" was a highly regarded album, and rightfully so, upon its release-- generally known as one of the true masters of the bass guitar, Miller shows off his skills on the instrument in this series of bass-driven songs-- Miller's schtick is to state the use the bass in a melody role, and why not? No one ever expects a sax player or guitarist to be confined to playing certain lines after all. The bass is mixed way in front, and is the primary solo voice on most pieces, but to me what makes Marcus so special as a bassist is his ability to seemlessly step back when soemone else solos and play in a more standard bassline role. Musically speaking, the album is hard driven electric jazz-- I hesitate to title it either fusion or smooth jazz, it is most clearly influenced by Miles' records with Marcus in the late '80s.



The song selection features a good number of covers on this record, incuding jazz masters Coltrane ("Lonnie's Lament"), Mingus ("Goodbye Pork Pie Hat") and Billy Cobham ("Red Baron") and new wave rock legends Talking Heads ("Burning Down the House"). Remarkably, its the pieces that Miller pulls way out of their original idiom, namely the Trane and the Mingus song, that succeed best-- "Lonnie's Lament" gets a really deep r&b arrangement that so stunningly reinterprets the song as to bury the original and "Goodbye Pork Pie Hat" is one of those songs for bassist, they all eventually pursue it. "Burning Down the House" really fails miserably in my book, it just sounds kind of goofy.



The remainder of the album is largely bass-driven instruments, some succeed better than others (opener "Power", "Nikki's Groove") and a couple great r&b vocal tunes ("Boomerang", with just some monster bass playing, "Your Amazing Grace")-- if there's a complaint, its that the album is really quite long and gets a little repetitive now and again, but there's so much good material on the record that its easy to overlook this. I'd recommend "The Sun Don't Lie" over this one, but its definitely a great record."