Lanu (featuring MeganWashington) - Her TwelveFaces

Mon 14th Feb, 2011 in Music Reviews

It’s a safe bet that collaborating with Megan Washington is a sure-fire way to get any artist noticed given her meteoric rise to fame over the last year with her album I Believe You Liar. But Her Twelve Faces is not a Washington album; it’s a product of Bamboo’s front man Lanu (aka Lance Ferguson ).

Both Lanu and Washington have writing credits for all the songs she appears on in this album, with Lanu composing the rest of the tracks as solo instrumentals (except for the French language version of Roxy Music’s More Than This, which closes the album). So with Lanu’s funk and jazz sensibilities lending to the solid backing of Washington’s intoxicating singing, the result is inevitably going to be of decent quality. Sure enough it proves to be a charming but sometimes disjointed album.

Beautiful Trash makes a great introduction to Twelve Faces and is definitively the most marketable track on the album. If forced to choose between this and the remixed version (included as a bonus track) it’s a difficult choice as the standard version is more in line with Lanu and Washington’s regular compositions with a kooky acoustic guitar and piano backing giving Washington something light to keep her vocals bouncing along. The remix however is filled with house music synthesisers and is more a juiced up Washington track rather than a Lanu original. Thankfully they’re both great tracks thanks to Washington’s cheeky vocals with one version catering for the casual indie pop listener and the other filling the void for any music lovers who spend their Saturday nights under strobes and lasers.

Wire also showcases Washington’s brilliant vocals mixed in with a juxtaposing harp and bassline. Despite some repetitiveness, the pretty harp trills complement the bass well, and with the addition of Washington’s voice, the beauty of this track flourishes. Fall works better as an acoustic bonus track as its standard version has very monotonous backing that fails to show off anything special from Lanu. The real treat is Washington’s loving vocal delivery of someone close to her slipping away.

Sometimes Twelve Faces sounds like one part Washington release and one part Lanu release and there aren’t too many songs that feel like absolute collaborations. The best of the Lanu standalone tracks is easily The Coral Route, where he pays tribute to a time when cargo planes would fly through the South Pacific in the 1950s. The song is the best example of a soundscape with the steel guitar perfectly capturing the feel of island living back in the day. It’s a brilliant song and one of Lanu’s finest compositions.

It’s a shame some of his other instrumentals don’t compare. Instrumental der Hotel Blume starts off promising but fails to build in a truly satisfying way over an endless loop of the same guitar part and background vocals. 1988 also suffers from a lack of forward momentum and remains stuck in a jazz lounge sound rut, and the big question arises when listening to these two tracks: where was Megan Washington? Her vocals would have given the songs some emotion and given this is a collaboration album she should have jumped in on a few more tracks.

As a Lanu album, there isn’t anything too exciting on here to brag about, but with Megan Washington’s assistant on a couple of key tracks, Her Twelve Faces makes for an exciting companion to Washington and Lanu’s already excellent catalogue.