Music
Space Capone is the alter ego of Aaron Winters, who recorded his mildly uncanny full-length debut, Vol. 1: Transformation, in around a week at a house in East Nashville, where he lives. It’s an assured record. To say that Transformation often evokes the ambivalent bravado of the Reagan-era funk of Prince, Chic and Ray Parker Jr. isn’t to say it’s a pastiche and nothing more. At ease with its idiom, it never sets a foot wrong.
Before he became Space Capone, Winters spent his boyhood in rural Carthage, Ind., where he absorbed the music of Michael Jackson and Boyz II Men. After moving to Nashville in 2003, he put out a couple of EPs under his own name before making Transformation with a Pro Tools rig and a band that includes guitarist Court Clement and keyboardist Demarco Johnson. The record is rich without being cloying, and Winters writes songs that ride on big, fat, guileless hooks.
“Friday (Pay Day)” hangs strings and background vocals over brisk, chunky drums and clavinet. “I got a job at the factory, girl,” Capone sings. “I’ve been working real hard / Punchin’ my card, baby / Counting down the days / ’Til the end of the week.” This is working-stiff soul, bringing to mind Fonzi Thornton’s 1982 “I Work for a Livin’,” which combined a populist message with the slightly abstract production of Chic’s Bernard Edwards and Nile Rodgers.
Like its ’80s antecedents, Transformation makes a case for the utopianism of the average guy. “Lovin’ Livin’ ” finds Capone singing, “Copin’, still strugglin’ / Kissin’ and a-huggin’ / Hoping that my life / Might last a little longer.” It’s a typically plain-spoken lyric that scans beautifully over the relaxed shuffle that underpins the performance.
Harmonically sophisticated, Transformation is a commercial funk record that effortlessly combines banality and exactitude in its search for a plausible heaven that includes personal appearances by Al Jarreau. “My Dudes (All Approve)” comes across like Kool & the Gang playing a song by Steely Dan auteurs Walter Becker and Donald Fagen, while “Turn Around” and “If It Feels Good” move in sections that modulate in intensity and volume.
On “Space Capone” and “The Motion,” Capone operates in a couple of the myriad styles associated with Prince, and doesn’t suffer by comparison. “Space Capone” takes the off-kilter approach The Purple One perfected on Dirty Mind and applies it to a slightly modified blues. “The Motion” recalls the expansive Prince of “Another Lonely Christmas” and features these lines: “I’m feelin’ pressure from you, baby / What I need from you right now / Is to be on time.”
Vol. 1 Transformation
Space Capone (Self-released) Playing Friday, 1st at Mercy LoungePerhaps Transformation’s finest and catchiest song is “I Just Wanna Dance,” an uptempo rocker pitched somewhere in a key between Michael Jackson and Prince. “She’s got me feeling like I look / Which is very very sexy,” Capone sings. He’s finally made it to the dance floor, and he’s in love with pure style, like any self-respecting pop musician with an affinity for the innocence of a bygone era. “I don’t wanna love you, baby,” he sings. “I just wanna dance.” If Transformation has a flaw, it lies in its even-handedness. The best funk of the early ’80s—Gladys Knight and the Pips’ brilliant “Bourgié Bourgié,” say, or Chic’s “I Got Protection” and “Real People”—itched with unfulfilled desires and misgivings about the value of its own sophistication. Space Capone’s music has integrity, but it might benefit from some alienation—a state of mind that almost always trumps the bourgeois compulsion to tame the past.
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