Out of Camo – Ken Tran (reviewed by Dave Franklin)

Poetry and music have always made for easy bedfellows. After all, what are lyrics if not just a layer of poetry running across the top of a song? And poetry itself has its own beat and meter, the very rules that direct and organise music. No, the two art forms are not that different.

It is, therefore, hardly surprising that so many artists have worked at the point where the two disciplines come together, from Woody Guthrie to Gil Scott Heron to punk poet Joolz to Benefits‘ recent Constant Noise album. And coming from the other direction, Jack Kerouac and Bill Hicks have also made notable contributions to the genre.

So, having established that Ken Tran and his collaborators follow in a fine tradition, we find an album that resonates deeply in the modern world, especially with many of the issues running through American society today.

Words are obviously the focal point here, but the music is anything but a background sound; it often follows and even drives the narrative through percussive energy and soulful vocal washes, weaving through found sounds (often very reminiscent of Marvin Gaye‘s progressive soul masterpiece What’s Going On) and glitchy trap beats, often opting for a creative use of space and atmosphere to frame the stark truths being offered.

Out of Camo digs deep not only into the experience of military service, but also, like the aforementioned groundbreaking album, the often more complex issues of the Black experience. While the opening title track shares the common experience of those first hours of heading back into the civilian world, tracks like ‘Black Under Fire’ examine a crucial duality: the respect owed to anyone who has served their country, alongside the still-entrenched racial tensions that seem to negate such a contribution. And as the lyrics say, this is the story of a “black soldier fighting two wars” – fighting for his country as an idea and fighting for an equal place within its actuality!

‘The Veteran’ explores the female perspective via Erika Rene Land‘s rhythmic narration and touches on the shocking reality often faced by those who join up as a career move or out of financial necessity, never expecting to find themselves under fire in a country that, months ago, they might not have been able to point to on the map easily.

‘Remorse Code’ explores the nature of grief, especially poignant as you hold a folded flag before a colleague’s coffin, a friend gone before their time, having given everything for a country that they never got to grow old in and ‘Memory’ discusses the latent and lingering trauma of service, which, for those looking on, is boiled down to medals and salutes and a country’s sense of national pride without ever really understanding what veterans go through in the name of such cliches.

Spoken word records rarely get the recognition they deserve in a world of pop sales and rock-and-roll banality, celebrity worship, and unearned entitlement. ‘Out of Camo’ deserves to be the best-known album on the planet, and it should be played and discussed in schools at the very least; its importance, poignancy, and relevance surely demand it.

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