Wednesday, January 31, 2007
feed a fire
Promo Pile: Vol. 1
Women and Children - Paralyzed Dance, Tonight
Women and Children's bio reads like an atlas, with the group's four members coming from disparate locales, and the band's core of Kevin Lasting and Cheryl Serwa seemingly participating in endless jetsetting. It's fitting then, that while Paralyzed Dance, Tonight is grounded in the folk tradition, the 14 tracks tend to be all over the map.
It sounds thrown together. Some of the songs sound off the cuff. Some of the tracks end on bum notes that weren't edited out during mixing and mastering. And there certainly isn't any easily discernible theme that lends itself to any sort of album length cohesion. But in spite - or perhaps because - of the aforementioned elements, it's a surprisingly enjoyable 40-minute listen.
Kevin and Cheryl take an equal share of the vocal duties. Generally speaking, I'm a sucker for complimentary male/female vocals, but while the tracks that feature complimentary crooning are still quite good, the songs that feature a lone singer fare the best.
It's probably also correct to call it "freak folk." And while I like my share of that scene, those two words also often evoke thoughts of not having enough drugs to possibly make the song in question enjoyable. Luckily, that's not the case at all with Women and Children.
In retrospect, when you break it down on paper (or in cyberspace) this record has nearly everything going against it, but somehow ends up being rather wonderful. That probably speaks to the value of music criticism, but that's another discussion for another time.
download: Women and Children - Born TP
download: Women and Children - My Bad
On an unrelated note, you've got another 24 hours to click on the sidebar so you can pick up a copy of that k-os picture disc.
now playing: Women and Children - Oranges
feed a fire
You may recall that a couple months ago I resolved to take a page out of Frank's book and put aside Sunday for a little cleaning, by writing up something from the growing stack of records that sits beside my computer. Obviously, I haven't been very good about keeping with that plan, and frankly, there are a lot of Sundays where there's something else to write about instead (ie. a show from Saturday night). So rather than set aside a certain day of the week, I'm going to throw up reviews on days like today, when there's not much else to say. Generally speaking, I'm going to ignore things that I out and out dislike, so you can expect that any record that comes under the "promo pile" heading falls somewhere between "pretty good" and "great" in my humble opinion.
Promo Pile: Vol. 1
Women and Children - Paralyzed Dance, Tonight
Women and Children's bio reads like an atlas, with the group's four members coming from disparate locales, and the band's core of Kevin Lasting and Cheryl Serwa seemingly participating in endless jetsetting. It's fitting then, that while Paralyzed Dance, Tonight is grounded in the folk tradition, the 14 tracks tend to be all over the map.
It sounds thrown together. Some of the songs sound off the cuff. Some of the tracks end on bum notes that weren't edited out during mixing and mastering. And there certainly isn't any easily discernible theme that lends itself to any sort of album length cohesion. But in spite - or perhaps because - of the aforementioned elements, it's a surprisingly enjoyable 40-minute listen.
Kevin and Cheryl take an equal share of the vocal duties. Generally speaking, I'm a sucker for complimentary male/female vocals, but while the tracks that feature complimentary crooning are still quite good, the songs that feature a lone singer fare the best.
It's probably also correct to call it "freak folk." And while I like my share of that scene, those two words also often evoke thoughts of not having enough drugs to possibly make the song in question enjoyable. Luckily, that's not the case at all with Women and Children.
In retrospect, when you break it down on paper (or in cyberspace) this record has nearly everything going against it, but somehow ends up being rather wonderful. That probably speaks to the value of music criticism, but that's another discussion for another time.
download: Women and Children - Born TP
download: Women and Children - My Bad
On an unrelated note, you've got another 24 hours to click on the sidebar so you can pick up a copy of that k-os picture disc.
now playing: Women and Children - Oranges
Labels: biting chromewaves, promo pile, women and children
