Michael Franti

It's ironic that Michael Franti's latest Spearhead album, Yell Fire!, comes just as the situation in the Middle East has deteriorated to its worst state in more than 20 years. Franti recorded the album, his most heartfelt plea for peace and coexistence yet, after returning from a trip to the Middle East. There, he shot a documentary called I Know I'm Not Alone, based on his experiences meeting citizens and soldiers in Iraq, Israel and the Gaza Strip. Like Franti's music, the film is at once angry and hopeful, offering a reassuring faith in people's inherent goodness, even though it offers no real answers to the political and religious conflicts that tear their communities apart. And like that film, Franti's new record is equal parts inspiring, entertaining, thought-provoking and frustrating -- because as good as it is, it's also a little too safe and polite to be the musical/political bombshell it could have been.

What Franti and Spearhead do best is the same thing that Matisyahu almost managed to take to the mainstream earlier this year: a party-friendly mix of pop, hip-hop and reggae, spiced up with a few rock guitar hooks and politically and/or spiritually challenging lyrics. For all of Matisyahu's success, Franti is much better at it -- no, he can't spit rhymes like a dancehall champion, but infectious songs like "Hello Bonjour" and "Everybody Ona Move" are guaranteed to get any festival crowd bouncing, while his best "political" songs have a universal, Bob Marley-ish appeal that make lines like "God is too big for just one religion" sound like greeting-card truisms. And with each Spearhead album, Franti continues to get better at mixing things up with ballads and straight-ahead pop songs, although he still tends to tip his influences a little too blatantly -- "I Know I'm Not Alone," for example, employs the same uplifting chords as U2's "With or Without You," while the chorus on "One Step Closer to You" is a carbon copy of Marley's "No Woman No Cry," right down to the purring Hammond organ.

Still, for me, Franti remains a frustrating artist. He's a vibrant, charismatic performer with a unique singing style, great pop sensibilities and something important to say. But the fiery temperament he flashed in his younger days with the Disposible Heroes of Hiphoprisy has been largely replaced by a warmth and serenity that is appealing, but too often slips into feel-good blandness. He delivers too many bear hugs and not enough right hooks -- and in a world in which Israel and Hezbollah are threatening to drag a whole region into war, hugs might not be enough to get the message across. - Andy Hermann

Michael Franti's worldview and his music are so tightly entangled that it's difficult to imagine one existing without the other. So none of his fans could have been all that surprised when Franti returned from a 2004 trip to war-torn regions of Iraq, Israel, and Palestine and subsequently released both I Know I'm Not Alone, a documentary film/DVD based on his travels, and Yell Fire!, his most socially conscious album to date. While Yell Fire! is nothing as precious as a concept album, neither is there a song on the lyrically direct set that doesn't find Franti driving home a point, be it on the precarious state of our planet and those who've rendered it so, or the fragile condition of human relationships and the urgency with which people need to repair them. Recorded in both Kingston, Jamaica (the legendary Riddim Twins of reggae, Sly & Robbie, each guest on four tracks), and in San Francisco, Yell Fire! is stacked with deep grooves: the opening "Time to Go Home," "Everyone ona Move," the title track, and "Light Up Ya Lighter" all share a clarity of vision, attitude of great magnitude, and a levels-deep lyrical richness, all while kicking serious rhythmic ass. But even the texturally lighter moments -- the ballads "One Step Closer to You" (with harmony vocals by Pink), "Tolerance," and "Is Love Enough?" -- follow through on the album's thread of righteous positivity, no-brainer pacifism, accept-it-or-die tolerance, and the universal unification of spirit. Franti's brain-stimulating songwriting rises to a new level of proficiency here -- the playful "Hello Bonjour" is as much a shout out to truth and justice as the knife-sharp "See You in the Light." If there is a weakness, it's that the arrangements to which Franti's listen-carefully lyrics are set often fall subservient to his boosted-in-the-mix vocals. At times that leaves Spearhead's reggae/funk/dancehall/hip-hop amalgams necessarily shadowed by their leader's real-life, life-affirming commentaries. But never does Yell Fire! suffer for it. What Franti is saying here is what needs to be heard -- sooner than later. ~ Jeff Tamarkin, All Music Guide