The Album
Anteater: So Jeff Porcaro has been dead a few years and things have settled back down a bit in Totoland, and Tambu is something of a tribute to him. By this point though, I don't think Toto were getting any real mainstream exposure anywhere in the U.S. at all
Unknown Soldier: So much so that yet again at the time I remember I never knew the album had come out till sometime after.
Unknown Soldier: Also by then old bands like Toto weren't really pushed by the labels it seemed, they preferred to go it seemed with something newer.
Anteater: which is weird because Sony was their label at this point and as usual the production team was top-notch.
Anteater: We haven't gotten into the songs or anything, but I'll go ahead and say that from a production standpoint 'Tambu' is fantastic.
Unknown Soldier: Oh agreed, the production is fantastic which is probably why it was nominated for a grammy!
Anteater: yeah, it was up for Best Engineered Album, Non-Classical in '97
Anteater: This was the first album with drummer Simon Phillips, whose style is a bit different from Porcaro's.
Unknown Soldier: Well Simon Phillips has such a wide CV in the amount of albums he had played on before. From Judas Priest and Michael Schenker to Mike Rutherford and Mike Oldfield and then onto stuff like Toyah .......... and that's just naming a few.
Anteater: He's very well travelled, and he was one of Jeff's favorite drummers while he was alive too. So he fit in as good as anyone could at the time.
Unknown Soldier: I've never had any problem accepting Simon Phillips as the band's drummer.
Anteater: Neither did I: he's been drummer on a lot of my favorite Toto songs and recordings and I think his inclusion here also created yet another shift in sound from 1992's Kingdom Of Desire
Unknown Soldier: Same concept in that the album runs more or less the same kind of running time and without too much variety and Steve L singing everything (bar the duets)
Anteater: I'll disagree on the variety count: there's a lot more changes in tempo and overall mood here and even some overt funk-oriented material
Unknown Soldier: Well you know and appreciate the album a lot more than I do. I am of course listening to it as we speak and apart from the latest, it's the album that I know least of all.
Anteater: From a pure songwriting standpoint, I consider Tambu a bit more of a "success" thank Kingdom Of Desire despite the fact like the former a tad more due to its behemoth sound and uniqueness within their body of work.
Unknown Soldier: Well Kingdom of Desire kind of smashed the ears of the listener due to it overtly heavy feel, so that kind of took some of the pressure off the songwriting element of the album.
Unknown Soldier: Tambu doesn't attempt to hide imo in that respect anyway.
Anteater: It's a jazzier, funkier album. It also has a few surprisingly nice pop-rockers here and there too, such as the extended opener 'Gift Of Faith'.
Unknown Soldier: "Gift of Faith" does continue the band's tradition of choosing the right type of song to be the album opener
Anteater: It's a very 90's styled "believe in yourself" type of heartland rock piece, the kind of thing Bruce Springsteen might have done as an extended jam live or something.
Anteater: Toto at this point have definitely adapted in their own way to the changing times I guess
Unknown Soldier: In fact it kind of reminds me of an artist that i always forget the name of for some reason, I think he's a Texan btw and had a huge song around this time as well. I'll probably remember him a bit later.
Anteater: One thing on this album that's noticeable too are a lot of female backing vocals on a couple of songs and gives the whole album a vaguely 'spiritual' vibe
Unknown Soldier: Well that comes very quickly on the second track and principal single "I Will Remember"
Anteater: yeah, this one charted in the U.K. and also in Japan I think
Unknown Soldier: According to Wiki 67 in the UK chart.
Anteater: its a good song too, like Peter Gabriel gone super AOR. There's some nice percussion and texturing that serves as a meditative backdrop alongside some piano.
Unknown Soldier: Yes the percussion is nice and Lenny Castro an old Toto additional musician works on that song.
Anteater: I know your kind of leery about Lukather's ballads, but this one fares pretty well
Unknown Soldier: It's not too bad as far as Lukather ballads go
Unknown Soldier: You've mentioned a couple of times that one of your favourite Toto ballads is on one of these later albums?
Anteater: yeah, it comes midway through this album 'The Other End Of Time'
Unknown Soldier: As we're not doing these tracks in order as such, I've jumped to it to see what all the fuss is about.
Anteater: It just has a great melody and verse but not sure if its a better or worse ballad than I Will Remember, but since Tambu is all about reflection on life and death and stuff like that, it works really well in context too.
Unknown Soldier: Hate to break your heart, but it's one of the songs I switch off on, but sure it's the kind of thing that chicks really dig, especially with dim lights (cool)
Anteater: What can I say, I'm a big softie.
Anteater: For me the best stuff on the record aren't the ballads anyway though. The whole band contributed to songs like 'The Turning Point' for instance.
Unknown Soldier: "Turning Point" I do like and it's one of the better songs on the album and strangely enough my other favourite track is "Slipped Away". Both songs have exactly the same writing credits of: Lukather/Lynch/Paich/Phillips/Porcaro and they are the only two songs to do so.
Anteater: 'Slipped Away', 'Turning Point' and 'Time Is The Enemy' are all pretty swell
Anteater: There's a great soulful vibe going through them all in different ways
Unknown Soldier: "Time is the Enemy" has that funky start but the problem is that it sounds like a Level 42 song.
Anteater: I'd consider that a compliment haha, Level 42 were a musician's band too
Unknown Soldier: Never my kind of band but they were popular for a while here, hell what happened to them?
Anteater: They sorta phased out of popular consciousness by the early 90's, but they get together to tour live every so often. They had some great albums though
Unknown Soldier: We've mentioned the stronger tracks on the album, what would you say were the weaker efforts?
Anteater: 'Baby He's Your Man' and 'The Other End Of Time' are the album's two weakest tracks IMO
Anteater: I like the latter a lot, but its very formulaic and the former has some kind of loop sample thrown in there by Steve Porcaro of all people, but the song is a tad meandering.
Unknown Soldier: I thought the second track here was the ballad that you really liked?
Anteater: 'Just Can't Get To You' is pretty meh too.
Unknown Soldier: "Baby He's Your Man" is a poor song for sure.
Anteater: I like 'The Other End Of Time' as a ballad, but its definitely a weak track.
Unknown Soldier: Ok understand
Anteater: I'd say Tambu is about 70% pretty interesting material and 30% weak to average. It has more variety and energy and even overall nuance than Kingdom Of Desire but it also doesn't have a song on it that just absolutely kicks you over the hill like KOD's title track or Jake To The Bone
Unknown Soldier: I find "Just Can't Get to You" to be weak or better said boring.
Unknown Soldier: Tambu to me feels like a chill out album and when that kind of album arrives I'm often critical of it, as it has to be really good imo.
Anteater: All this being said, 'Drag Him To The Roof' is a surprisingly good and intricate jazz-fusion rock kicker, and 'The Road Goes On' is a pretty closer.
Anteater: But yes, Tambu is a bit of a chill out album, which in all honesty makes it a nice contrast from the previous album
Unknown Soldier: "Dave's Gone Skiing" is the instrumental here and kind of sounds like a Rush instrumental in places.
Anteater: Fantastic proggy instrumental there. This album also illustrates one of Toto's weirder traits as a band. See, even past the AOR part of their career you'd still get sappy ballads and such but then they throw out something like Dave's Gone Skiing and suddenly you remember again that these guys have been playing professionally for decades and they can give the classic prog bands a run for their money on occasion. It's a dichotomy you don't really get with any other band.
Unknown Soldier: Imo it's a pity that more of the songs didn't sound like it.
Anteater: You've got a good point there. But I still definitely recommend anyone exploring the band to give Tambu some time. It has some really good songs and ideas.
Unknown Soldier: Which leads me to the opinion that Tambu is kind of a cop-out album, as the label would've been shocked had they turned up with a Hydra part.2 album.
Anteater: I think Toto realized they needed to start tinkering with the formula again by the time Tambu actually got finished becauase the final part of the 90's album "trilogy" is by far the strangest one.
Unknown Soldier: So if you were recommending this album to the listener what would you say were its strong points and why they should actually listen to it?
Anteater: Eight out of the thirteen tracks are all instantly cherry pickable, which includes Time Is The Enemy, I Will Remember, Drag Him To The Roof, Slipped Away and the others we liked
Anteater: I like Lukather's ballads, but they're a tad samey overall for the most part on Tambu and don't do much besides fill up running time on the whole.
Anteater: My edition of the album includes a mid tempo blues piece called Blackeye, which isn't bad either.
Unknown Soldier: For me about 40 mins too long, again Steve.L sings on everything which like KoD stops it giving any real vocal variety and for me it's a chill out album that fails to hit the mark.,
Unknown Soldier: Yes "Blackeye" is with the backing/duet vocalist singing as lead.
Anteater: I consider 90's Toto to be the band in "Lukather really loves blues rock" mode with some stylistic variety from track-to-track depending on which record your listening to
Anteater: KoD is the really heavy one, Tambu is the chilled out one, and the upcoming 1999 release Mindfields is the one with the most variety and moods.
Anteater: But we'll save that review for next time of course
Unknown Soldier: Well as I first said at the beginning of these reviews, Lukather more or less took over the band leaderhip through and though by the time of Isolation and was calling all the shots, by the 1990s he indulged a bit too much imo and went from one extreme to the other with KoD and Tambu.
Unknown Soldier: For example anybody just knowing the band based on those two albums, would find little continuity and would unlikely like both albums.
Anteater: The biggest thing I miss about Toto during this period, like you mentioned, is how all the various members used to trade up on lead vocals
Anteater: This practice started to disappear by the time Joseph Williams came in full time, but he was such a versatile singer that it didn't matter as much.
Unknown Soldier: I really don't know why David Paich just stopped singing, he was kind of like equal to Steve Lukather in the early days on the amount of songs they both did behind Bobby Kimball.
Anteater: I don't think we'll ever known why Paich stopped doing lead stuff as much, but it was definitely a detriment
Unknown Soldier: As always when I heard that Tambu was the new album, I was praying that Fergie would be back. I think by the time the band got to the 00's I knew it was never going to happen!
Anteater: Yep! But somebody else does return for the next album....