REVIEW: Headnodic’s “The Iguana”
As a member of Mission:, which morphed into Crown City Rockers, Ethan Parsonage has been on top of his game not only as a producer, but as their bassist. The Headnodic moniker has kept his foot placed firmly in hip-hop, as a means to let people know he can make the kind of music that will make the head nod. While that in itself describes primarily hip-hop, it covers any form of music that will make you move, but often is used to describe the emotions feel when one listens to soul, funk, jazz, or any hybrid of these. All of his previous projects have never shied away from being hip-hop, but for The Iguana (Ropeadope), Headnodic leaves his assumed comfort zone to find himself in a place where he sounds quite comfortable.
If the album title is any indication, perhaps Headnodic seems himself as an iguana shedding its skin to reveal its truer, inner self. For me: Mission: and Crown City Rockers were always a band that were not only a hip-hop band, but a band who were great in playing a wide range of music. The public perception seemed to be that they merely played to show that they were a hip-hop backing band, and maybe that comes from hip-hop’s not so much misunderstanding of real instrumentation, but almost a lack of interest in it unless you were able to prove yourself. That’s not to say that Crown City Rockers didn’t, but after awhile it seemed its members were finding more adventures outside of the group’s core. Oddly enough, the core of the group would still remain, but by twisting things in a different way, one was able to find its own skin shedding, which revealed the different interests much stronger in this context. Headnodic’s previous album had a hip-hop focus but for The Iguana, hip-hop is put on the shelf and he allows himself to play the kind of music that made him want to become a musician in the first place.
To put it simply, this is the kind of album you would expect to find in the back of your favorite uncle’s or auntie’s closet, the one marked with the date 1977, along with handwritten call letters for one of the three radio stations that dared to play this music. The music is a mixture of not only soul and funk, but there are elements of jazz, Afro-beat, some Latin and Brazilian influences, and a track with a distinct Pink Floyd flavor that shows how he can move towards a progressive rock slant. As is my ritual, I like to listen to the music before I read anyone’s press release, I want my view of the music to be my own, I don’t like to be persuaded to feel one way just because that’s what they want me to feel. The influences I hear in this are very much what Headnodic wanted to achieve, and it’s nice to hear it done in this way, as if he’s saying “this is the kind of music I have loved, and this is not just me being a sample reference. There’s great music, and I’d like for all of you to hear what I can do with it.”
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