Records: Robbie Robertson's Contact From the Underworld

By Daniel Wilchins

Robbie Robertson has moved on since his days with The Band. Contact from the Underworld of Redboy is his fourth solo album, and listening to it makes you want to curl up in bed and doze. This is some of the blandest electro-rock you'll ever hear.

The "Redboy" of the title is Robertson; he is half-Mohawk and uses the album to meditate on the plight of Native Americans in contemporary America. Some of his lyrics are impressive, but the music here undercuts the power of the words. Robertson sings impassively; on "In the Blood," he describes his commitment to his Mohawk ancestry with all the vim and vigor of a man reading a statistical summary of the 1960 U.S. Census. The few interesting instrumental performances, such as Robertson's guitar solo on "Rattlebone," are drowned in an electronic soup of drum machine beats and repeated synthesizer riffs.

The most intriguing moments on Contact come when Robertson lets other Native Americans speak for themselves. Political prisoner Leonard Peltier tells his story from prison on "Sacrifice," and "The Sound is Fading" features a fascinating sample from Paiute Nation traditional singer Leah Hicks-Manning. But even these samples lose their impact when mixed over dull washes of electronica.

In Contact's striking cover photo, Robertson wears an intense facial expression that suggests that he has been thinking heavy thoughts, so heavy that his head must be propped up with his right hand. Robertson is good enough to share some of these thoughts with us. Unfortunately, his best music stays trapped inside his head.

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