RockPaperScissors

It's been 14 years since Michael Brook did a proper solo album, Cobalt Blue, but that doesn't mean the guitarist has been absent from music. He's produced and performed on pop recordings by Julia Fordham and Jorane and made numerous albums for the Real World label, including signature releases by the late Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, Djivan Gasparyan, and Hukwe Zawose. He's also composed and performed on film scores and was part of Hans Zimmer's soundtrack posse, contributing notably to Black Hawk Down, among others. He throws all of that into his new album, RockPaperScissors, which could've been called RockPaperScissors and Whatever, as Brook slices up a career's worth of influences and drops them in one load--albeit an elegant one. Lebanese violinist Claude Chalhoub turns in a mournful duet with Brook on "Tangerine," singer Paul Buchanan shows up on the title track, and a Bulgarian choir turns up incongruously on a dreamy, '60s style guitar instrumental, "LightStar." There are King Crimson-like guitar grooves on "3 Doges," and on "Darker Room," a spoken-word sample of Richard Burton performing Dylan Thomas's "Under Milk Wood," quoting the "Starless and bible-black" line that Crimson connoisseurs will note as the title to a one of their albums. Given Brooks's extensive work as a film composer and session artist, it makes sense that much of the disc has a cinematic quality, with many tracks featuring a full orchestra. Excepting Lisa Germano's haunting turn on "Want", the other two vocal tunes drag. Rather than honing a sound, as he did with Cobalt Blue, RockPaperScissors brims with too many ideas, as if Brook thought it might be another 14 years till his next album and he had to get it all out now. --John Diliberto  more