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'Cheap at Half the Price' is the third album by Fred Frith as a band leader, it is preceded by the brilliant world music influenced first album 'Gravity', and the more avant-garde sophomore effort 'Speechless'. 'Cheap', just like 'Gravity', turns to Eastern Europe and the Middle East for musical inspiration, but unfortunately 'Cheap' is not nearly as successful as 'Gravity'. The difference between the two albums is that 'Gravity' is mostly instrumental, but 'Cheap' is made up of odd world/avant-garde/pop songs that often feature Frith's 'quirky' vocals, and that is a problem. Fred Frith cannot sing. I think he knows this but assumes that since this is avant-garde rock his clever socio-political insights will be good enough to pull things off. The truth is Frith's music sounds so much better when he stays instrumental, which is proven on this album by the several instrumental songs on side two. The other problem with 'Cheap' is that a lot of the songs were built from pre-recorded drum tracks that repeat the same pattern (some of these drum patterns also show up on other Frith albums). Once again 'Gravity' was much better because the songs were performed by live musicians playing creative arrangements that included a lot of rhythmic variations.
This album is OK, but Frith is capable of much better.