A vast improvement over the intriguing but rarely focused
Let's Get Killed,
David Holmes' third solo album benefits from his growing status as a producer to watch -- and specifically, from his ability to snag the talents of big-name vocalists. As on his soundtrack for the feature film Out of Sight,
Holmes excels when he's providing a propulsive yet not overly self-conscious background for the prime focus, whether it's an action scene in a film or a song-oriented framework on an album. Recruiting the top rank of like-minded bluesy vocalists from the alternative world --
Bobby Gillespie (from
Primal Scream),
Jon Spencer (from the Blues Explosion),
Martina Topley Bird (a
Tricky collaborator), and an excellent newcomer,
Carl Hancock Rux --
Holmes plays on all the same heavy dub/soul/funk trademarks as on
Let's Get Killed, but constructs excellent productions with a tight, live, organic sound. Though
Gillespie's "Sick City" is yet another
Stonesy, tossed-off performance, the production on the track makes it a stomper of raging rocktronica. Elsewhere, on tracks like "Incite a Riot" and "69 Police,"
Holmes calls up dub ghosts from original Jamaican keyboard extraordinaire
Jackie Mittoo to scruffy indie rock inheritors like
Dub Narcotic. While his previous work came off as soundtrack material in desperate search of a film to accompany it,
Bow Down to the Exit Sign is very much a fully formed record. ~ John Bush