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Morcheeba:
Parts of the Process
Have you ever been to the record store in search of a greatest hits album? Sure, everyone has. Usually greatest hits records are good to buy when you just discovered a liking for a band thats been around for a few years, and you dont know which release to start out with. You name-check one song you know, like Come Sail Away, and you come home with Styxs greatest hits. You assume that youve beaten the system, because now you own all the Styx classics. Little do you know at the time that their greatest hits have been condensed into 30 minutes of randomly chosen songs by some industry schmuck that didnt even bother to include Mr. Roboto. Well cheers to Morcheeba and Sire records then for giving you your moneys worth with Parts of the Process. This whopping greatest hits collection contains 18 songs, running over 78 minutes, and it gives you such a nice mix of tracks from their albums that I cant imagine any fan of Morcheeba going wrong with this purchase. After all, the bands been pretty productive since they started in the mid-90s, and this is a great way to catch up with them. Up front in the Morcheeba sound, of course, is the sultry singing of Skye, who comes off as a frequently upbeat sort of cross between Beth Gibbons and Donna Summer. Around the time I first heard of them, Morcheeba were being classified as trip-hop, which is mainly a credit to the production team behind the music. Two brothers Paul and Ross Godfrey used to produce with David Byrne until they met Skye and decided to start Morcheeba. But the slickness of the Godfrey brothers aside, Morcheeba really isnt a Portishead on Prozac. Theres some undeniable disco flair scattered throughout this collection on tracks like Be Yourself and Way Beyond. There are definitely some scattered pop gems amidst this collection as well. But Morcheeba does have a serious side, and it really is the less flamboyant songs such as The Sea, Over and Over, and Moog Island that make up the backbone of the Morcheeba sound. The duet with Lambchop vocalist Kurt Wagner on What NY Couples Fight About is certainly a unique song, so there is some room on this release for Morcheebas more experimental side as well. In essence, this is what a greatest hits album should be: a full portrait of what makes a band good. The six-minute album tracks mix fine with the quick and dirty singles, and in case you havent heard Morcheeba before, watch out. A few listens to the disco groove of Rome Wasnt Built in a Day could send you off in search of your own copy of Parts of the Process.
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