Me and My Arrow - Harry Nilsson

It’s been a while since I’ve gone out on a limb and bought something on impulse, but two Harry Nilsson albums on once CD for three quid as pretty hard to resist. I picked up Skidoo and The Point in Fopp on Thursday and the CD hasn’t left my discman since. The beats and keyboard lines on Me and My Arrow are decades ahead of their time, crying out to be sampled.

In fact, that’s exactly what Blackalicious did to produce this this juicy rump-shaker.

Both of the Nilsson albums have the charm and humor that you rarely see in comtemporory music these days. On ‘Cast and Crew’ Nilsson sings the credits for the Skidoo movie. ‘I will Take You There’ and ‘Are You Sleeping’ are two classic-cuts of infectious late sixties/early seventies string-laden pop. The Point is an alegorical children’s fable written by Nilsson about a boy named Oblio who is banished to the Pointless Forest only to learn that everything has a point. The narration is class, you can even hear him turn the pages while he’s reading. It’s hard to imagine anyone making records as much fun as these two albums nowadays, but who knows - maybe everyone’s ready to lighten up a little.