Singer-Songwriter, Darren Berry (aka Mankato) is a canny master of the press, is he not? Name dropping everyone from Afrobeat icon Femi Kuti to Brooklyn hip-hop pioneer Roxanne Shante, Carlos Castenada to none other than Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and the Flaming Lips, Mr Berry strives to create an air of enviable credibility and complexity. The reality is far less interesting, as debut album ‘Safe As Houses’ reveals. Quoting the sublime achievements of marked, visceral talents like Wayne Coyne and Femi Kuti leaves Mankato to pursue the safe but good natured ambitions of mediocrity; and in no small quantities, too.
That one man alone can roll out the kind of outrageous press claims befitting a dozen or so regrettable artists, is equally lamentable:
“Electro just felt like something that was mine, both musically and culturally. I had my tracksuit and my piece of lino, the works. I’d just listen to ‘Queen Of Rox’ and we’d just imitate what they were doing in New York; breakdancing on street corners.“
Out of the mouth of Dizzee Rascal, or even Paul Oakenfold, this kind of claim may have sounded plausible. From Darren Berry it sounds faintly ridiculous.
From the very first moment that the ELO/Leo Sayer hybrid ‘Catch A Fire’ crawls from the wreckage, it’s clear that Mankato is not quite the purveyor of eccentric and obscure genius that he alleges to be. ‘Pictures of The Otherside’ proves to be about as radical as Tasmin Archer’s ‘Sleeping Satellite’ and as profound as a packet of crisps. The playful ‘Flesh and Bone’ proves a slightly better produce, but fails to actually lead anywhere. Its simple robotic pulse is pleasing enough, as are the whimsical “d ’ d’ do’s” – but where is it all going? And the excruciatingly twee and self-consciously ‘wacky’ ‘Fu-Manchu’ sounds like Jeff Lynn at his most bothersome.
It’s not all bad of course. These things seldom are, and oddly enough, it’s title track, ‘Safe As Houses’ that is the least cautious thing on the album. It’s not ‘Zongamin’ by any stretch of imagination, but its gentle honesty and plaintive delivery make it an almost likeable relief. ‘Medicine Man’ on the otherhand reawakens Berry’s lofty psychedelic ambitions, but rather than sounding like anything near a Space Oddity, or Yoshimi, it listens like a mulch of half-baked production ideas and a handful of esoteric soundbites.
Maybe it’s the biographical references to ‘capiero’ – the ancient Brazilian art of ‘boxing and dance mixed with voodoo philosophy’ or the alleged ‘psychic detox in a Tibetan Monastery’. Or maybe it’s the the breakdancing and the somersaults – I really don’t know, but one thing is certain; until Mankato’s management dispense with the ludicrous and pretentious attempts to make this tender East End songsmith sound more interesting than he really is, he’s almost certainly going to fail.
A case of mistaken identity? You betcha….