The fine line between boom-boom bap and crap-crap-crap

Two takes on the Scritti Politti conundrum: Sasha Frere-Jones and me. White Bread, Black Beer could use some beats; it wouldn't have violated Green Gartside's exquisite tonal control if he suggested that, even in the clutches of hermeticism, he still manages to dance around the living room.

EDIT: I wish I'd read Simon Reynolds' addenda -- he's thought about the album with unnerving scrupulousness. I don't deny that the intimations of real-life trauma -- "the kind of dance of the seven veils," he writes, "going on in the songs, a now-you-see-me-now-you-don't tease" -- to which Green alludes here and there are more gripping at present than his meta-games; but it's precisely his "feline self-caressing narcissism" that keeps me from diving beneath the shimmery beguiling surface. Plus, it bothers me that Green created this private record which hasn't a snow in sun's chance in hell of grazing the charts. Yeah, I know he tried this on 1999's Anomie & Bonhomie (what's up, Mos Def?), but since I haven't heard it I won't comment. Surely a polymath as conversant as Green can recast guitar-dominated emo-angst and Timbaland diva-grind -- 2006's most chart-friendly trends -- into something as familiar yet strange as "Perfect Way," "Wood Beez" and "Absolute" (I haven't played an older record this year as much as Cupid & Psyche '85) It irks me that Green's understanding of how one projects sincerity is as rockist as Paul McCartney or Thom Yorke's: he writes and produces every song, plays every instrument in sight. Mirrors compel when they reflect environment, not just the guy posing before it.