Rise up for No Skips, the weekly column where it’s decided if an album has any skippable tracks or not! In preparation for a certain celebration that shares the date with Easter Sunday this year, we’re taking a gander at a cult classic from 1997, Smoke City’s “Flying Away.” This is the first record we’ve looked at with no Wikipedia page. The album spawned a few successful songs and each song has nearly one million plays on Spotify, for good reason.
The short-lived trio took a Portishead-style approach to trip hop, which is a blending of hip-hop, soul and electronica, among other genres. Though the three met in England, lead vocalist Nina Miranda comes from Brazil, which helped define the group’s sound tremendously. With those Brazilian musical influences, Smoke City had the promise to push the genre forward.
The intro, “Underwater Love,” is the group’s most popular song by a long shot, thanks to a confusing Levi’s ad that would cause outrage if aired today. Slipping in between Portuguese and English, Miranda monologues about the sensual experience of this “underwater love” while Mark Brown and Chris Franck lay down a distinctive vibe.
A trip hop beat is accentuated by Brazilian percussion, and the effects make for an aquatic yet airy atmosphere. The cyclical chorus of “After the rain comes sun / After the sun comes rain again” is infectious, though the track is deconstructed halfway through and Miranda harmonizes as each instrument and sound effect gets to shine. The trip hop beat returns for the last two minutes of this seven-minute mammoth of an opener.
The first 30 seconds of “Devil Mood” match the style and absurdity of a Sun City Girls song even before the vocals are pronounced. If subwoofers had sentience, they would fear ever playing this track because the low-end goes crazy. Miranda, who’s “in a devil of a mood,” takes the energy to a manic state by shrieking and essentially moaning a minute before the track ends.
“With You” is sung almost entirely in English and takes an approach more like bossa nova. Miranda goes through the struggles of breaking off a relationship: “The fear of separation / Became an obsession,” yet the pain of hardship made her “let [her] love go.” From glistening strings in the chorus to a sitar section, the track is still sonically interesting despite being less experimental than the previous two.
Albeit paling in comparison to DJ Shadow’s “The Number Song,” the fourth track, “Numbers,” is labeled as an interlude, yet it doesn’t feel like one. Booming percussion backs Miranda’s recitation of numbers in Portuguese and English for five minutes, which is long but surprisingly strong.
“Mr. Gorgeous (And Miss Curvaceous)” picks up where “With You” left off with a bossa nova rhythm. This one is a bit poppier as Miranda describes the “Miss Curvaceous” character. The chorus, with one or both of the guys in the group, is also contagious with repetition of “Aye, aye, aye.”
“Águas de Março (Joga Bossa),” despite its status as a cover of a song by Antônio Carlos Jobim, has unique lyrics. On a minimalist backing beat, Miranda proclaims, “Let’s speak Brazil Portuguese” before translating many words from Portuguese to English. This causes some funny moments like “Banana is banana,” but she ties it back to mean something when saying “Viajar is to travel and you can come too.”
“Dark Walk” is an upbeat banger with a groovy bassline and barely any vocals. The opening half feels like a song from animator PilotRedSun, who also makes music under Pilotredsky, which is quite out of place on this tracklist. While that’s anything but bad, Miranda slips in for an interlude before the beat returns. Once again, five minutes is a stretch on this one, but it’s a pleasant cut.
The string-filled “Jamie Pan” is a return to form, with Miranda sounding angelic, like Lætitia Sadier from Stereolab. She tells the story of a Peter Pan figure, later mentioning how Jamie Pan is liberated from constraints caused by people like Che Guevara. “Giulietta,” the second interlude, is largely acoustic as Miranda quietly speaks to the titular Giulietta, functioning as a love ballad and also as an appreciation of nature.
The title track concludes the record, which is fitting given the main English lyrics are “Goodbye, sweet romance / I am flying away now.” More percussion is laden with reverb and Miranda gives a stunning vocal performance to leave the listener with.
Considering Portishead has three albums to date and Massive Attack’s output was spotty past the 1990s, I shouldn’t complain about Smoke City’s measly two albums. However, one must wonder if trip hop would’ve stayed in the zeitgeist past the ‘90s if innovators like Smoke City kept releasing new music.