Naked Eye (track)
by Luscious Jackson

From soundguardian 12/17/2013 09:14

There's much more than simply a catchy hook to this piece. Fever In Fever Out incorporates not only the poppy sounds found in the previous release In Search of Manny, but also draws from the dark and creative aspects of Luscious Jackson's earlier work.

This is certainly an ambitious track, mixing melodical lines with rapped lyrics, and the notable production value exemplifies the extreme amount of time and meticulous care given to engineer, edit, and master such an intricate piece. Balancing the various instrumentation in each section of the piece, the electronic sounds that sometimes creep in at places, the occasional vocal echo, the reverb, the haunting backing vocals, that infection groove - everything is in its right place. There's never a sense that it's been over-produced or ill-produced, which is too often a slippery slope.

The lines that strike me the most are when the narrator elaborates that she "wanted to be satisfied / I tried to be dignified / Wearing nothing is divine / Naked is a state of mind". Here, the expression "Naked Eye" is expanded from its conventional figure of speech. It's not just unaided visual perception of the narrator's surroundings; it become analogous to unobscured socio-psychological awareness of truth and honesty in the narrator's interpersonal relationships. This openness with her lover, for example, relieves her of the tension that would otherwise accumulate, or as she puts it, "magnify"; brightens the narrator's horizons, filling her with the warmness of self-satisfaction and accomplishment.