Panic in Babylon

by Rick Anderson Yes, he's a genius, and yes, he's probably certifiably nuts, and yes, that combination of genius and insanity has now yielded several decades of absolutely brilliant (if notoriously inconsistent) music. And yes again, it's true that most of what has come out under his name in the last seven or eight years has been a big disappointment. But the latest album from Lee "Scratch" Perry is a brilliant return to form. On Panic in Babylon he's teamed up with the White Belly Rats, a Swiss reggae band with an uncommon ability to simultaneously stir up rich, dense reggae grooves and put the focus squarely on Perry and his sometimes incoherent, sometimes brilliant, sometimes hilarious ravings. Things come together in a perfect storm of reggae power on "Fight to the Finish," with its gorgeous chorus and stomach-churning dubwise groove, and on the ferocious "Baby Krishna," on which a swinging one-drop beat underpins Perry's invocations of Hindu deities, American presidents and Babylonian destruction. Not everything is equally brilliant -- "Pussy Man" is one of Perry's most threadbare conceits -- but when he invites you to "have a Perry salad/For this is Perry ballad" halfway through the album, you'll be more than willing to take him up on the offer.