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Everything Is Borrowed

by

The Streets

 
Everything Is Borrowed
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Mike Skinner gets philosophical

  • We Say...

    Review by Michaelangelo Matos

    Mike Skinner may be big on concepts, but his lyrics have always been rooted in the everyday. Each of his first three albums, credited to the Streets, had a basic overarching theme: 2002's Original Pirate Material was the introduction, "a day in the life of a geezer," as he put it; 2004's A Grand Don't Come for Free chronicled an ordinary bloke's travails after losing a sizable sum. Even 2006's The Hardest Way to Make an Easy Living, which dealt with the high life's aftereffects, made much of fame's drudgery — less "poor me" than an examination of the way success swaps one set of day-to-day priorities out for another.

    But Everything Is Borrowed is where Skinner gets philosophical. Many of these songs wrestle with ideas of the "Who are we?" variety rather than detail the minutiae of his (or his character's) surroundings. What's more surprising is that it sounds like such a natural progression, in part because Skinner's always-present sense of humor nudges his musings forward. "I love the rain on my scars," he declares at one point on the album's title track; on the next song he overdubs himself to resemble a laddish choir, exulting, "I want to go to heaven for the weather." If he's going to think out loud about religion ("Alleged Legends") or evolution ("The Way of the Dodo") this way, he's obviously determined to have fun doing it.

    Musically, Everything Is Borrowed isn't as startling as the first two albums; by definition it couldn't be, since those titles helped to redefine hip-hop in uniquely English terms. His cadences have relaxed a little; his verbiage has less herky-jerk in it, and his choruses tend toward the sing-songy. Everything also emphasizes more intricate arrangements for live instrumentation, and while its expansiveness doesn't always work, Skinner can still grab your attention with well-placed touches, such as the simple, looped guitar and kick drum of "The Sherry End" and the line of pizzicato strings underpinning "The Escapist." The latter, the album's closing track, gets positively metaphysical: "These walls were never there/Nor the ceiling, nor the chair." These songs, though, are definitely clear and present.

  • They Say...

    Review by John Bush, All Music Guide

    By the end of the last Streets album, The Hardest Way to Make an Easy Living, listeners and even most fans were ready for Mike Skinner to stop complaining about the perils of celebrity. Skinner sounded crass and cynical, utterly disgusted with his life and very bitter about what it had become. (In so doing, it proved that he's one of the most honest songwriters to ever step up to a microphone.) Everything Is Borrowed is a neat about-face, a record that couldn't be more different from its predecessor. Sincere, considered, and poignant, Everything Is Borrowed finds Skinner remaining one of the foremost lyricists in pop music, and so much the better when the focus of his sharp writing is the struggle of weighty concepts instead of flimsy celebrity. Skinner's characters in these parables are struggling, no doubt, but in the process they're also coming upon profound insights about life, death, and love, ranging from the slightly pithy ecology dance piece "The Way of the Dodo" all the way up to the struggle between good and evil in each person ("Heaven for the Weather," which reveals its odd title and its lyrical genius in the line "I want to go to heaven for the weather/But hell for the company"). The instrumentation, as well, is far more different than any previous Streets record. Although the drums don't always sound live, most of the time they are, courtesy of drummer Johnny "Drum Machine" Jenkins. Electric guitar and bass occupy a lot of space, along with the occasional strings and even brass. Nevertheless, since the instruments are wielded the same way that the synths were in the past, there's no radical change in format. Skinner still busies himself speaking most of the verses (often tripping over himself) and singing every chorus (usually off-key), as though he's stumbling upon every genius line, daft as they sometimes sound. He's just as stingy with his productions as he has been ever since the second Streets album, so those who ache for the crystalline production perfection of Original Pirate Material won't find much here to cling to. But singing (or speaking) words of wisdom like this certainly makes up for his gradual move away from the super-producer status he's enjoyed in the past. Suddenly optimistic, or at least philosophical, about life, Skinner catches lightning in the bottle for the third time, and makes it clear that once we're able to look back at the Streets discography -- Skinner has promised that this is the fourth of five -- it will be easy to see The Hardest Way to Make an Easy Living much more simply, troubled and frustrating though it was, as a way to exorcise some of his darker demons, and make the journey to the light more invigorating.

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