: Nervous Nero Home : Evil Twin Theory Home : other writing archives : contact : : : : Order Cheap Tadalafil . Play shooting games, free shooting games online. . payday loans		The Best Record of 1968 Review: Grey Revell Crazy Like An Ambush First of all, none of you bastards know anything. You think you know what antifolk (or folk, or punk, or songwriting, or rebellion, or the zeitgeist or your own asses or that pothole on 7th Street or whatever) is all about, what parameters hold what constitutes your personal musical universe together like some bag of cheap Napa Valley wine and keep it separate in style and market share from Limp 92 or Master-B or whatever silicone turds they're overworking to give Howard Stern his piss breaks over on KROCK. You think that just because you've seen every pieceashit hero that's crawled up the pop charts like the first fish to grow legs get their start lugging their guitars up & down Avenue A saying novenas for a good number at the Anti-Hoot, that gives you the right to decree that Grey Revell's new record is some kind of artistic waste. I've heard y'all, in the couple of weeks I've been walking around with this promo copy burning a hole in my stereo. It's too busy-sounding, I've heard, it's too unfocused, there's too many sounds on it, it's too much to pay attention to at one time, it's sounds too drugged up and fucked up, it'll never get airplay, that's no way to become a Big Rock Star, my diaper needs changing, it's overproduced, it's overmixed, why can't he just be a punk like Bendik or a pretty songsmith like The Voices or something? And it's not that these allegations don't have some merit. It is probably the busiest-sounding record anyone with no budget will ever make, and sometimes there's effects for effects sake, and sometimes they get in the way of some pretty damned catchy songs and subtle lyrics & musical fiddlydoos that could have maybe been executed a little better. But who listens to lyrics anymore anyway? I mean, really. Haven't we learned anything from the Spice Girls & Pokemon? With good sizzle, you can sell any steak. And I'll take this 12-song collection of burps and cycles and (yes) excellent songs over anything Lou "Mr. Mambo Even Though I Only Speak German & Have As Much Artistic Credibility as Milli Vanilli" Bega will ever do, eight days out of seven, danke shane. Like many records I love (Blood & Chocolate, I Feel Alright, Blang!), the record really starts with the second cut. Not that "Morning Sun" is bad or anything, actually the looping chant of the chugging guitar serves as kind of a watch swinging back & forth to lull you into the trancey trippy tableau that makes up the rest of Crazy Like An Ambush. But things really start cooking with "Getaway Car," which is easily the best noisy song on the record. Some drunk-sounding woman yells like she's being tickled or hallucinating at the top of the song, and then Good evening, boys & girls & welcome to the skyscraper concert, Grey welcomes you to the party, before double-tracking his spoken introduction over some overloaded bagpipes or maybe they're accordions (the whole thing, and really the whole record, sounds like the scene in Oliver Stone's The Doors where they're doing peyote in the desert and Val Kilmer is dancing like crazy and trying to scare the vultures, and even though you're thinking, gawd that's goofy, you're still a little transfixed), and it sure sounds like he ends the intro with All you young children with old souls, sit back, enjoy the ambush, which if it isn't what he really says is sure as hell a pretty good way to start the record for real anyways. And although "Getaway Car" sounds like it's about 58 minutes long, it tops out at 4:23, you wimps. Shit, Joie DBG has longer songs than that. (Well, one anyway.) And the whole mix is submerged in this sonic sludge, like (producer) Spencer Chakedis managed to upload a half-dozen tracks of someone's repressed memories right onto the tape. (Match that one, Psychic fuckin' Hotline!) One thing I happen to think is really cool, though so far I'm alone in this one: instead of solos, someone's wailing just slightly off-key, which would be totally grating if it wasn't being done with such gusto, and it makes the whole song sound like some dubby hippy hoppy loopy thing from Side Five of Sandanista! The whacked-out reverie segues quite nicely (I'm a sucker for smooth segues) into the restrained "Live Alisa," which if Aerosmith did it would explode halfway through into full-on power balladry, but Grey plays this song about his inability to love a woman who controls the elements with her moods (literally, she rocks his world) real close and even, and leads it into the darker-toned "Cyanide Girl of the Sea," in which the second off-key wailing solo of the album actually doesn't work, coming as it does in the big payoff part, coming out of the bridge, where Grey finally realizes that maybe there isn't a future between him & the self-destructive objet du désir his mother warned him about long ago. One reason I think Crazy Like An Ambush reminds me of Carlos Castaneda doing peyote pellets in the Mojave (or some similar semi-surreal interlude) is that even more than most albums, the great biblical elements are all over it: dressed in new lightning, burn your body down, neon fills the sky. That and the relentless sonic otherworldliness really makes the whole thing sound like it came from an ultrafaraway somewhere else, and not from that cute little El Lay transplant we all know (& secretly just a little bit maybe c'mon admit it wish we were) who takes his semi-regular shift in the East Village scene with all the rest of us footsoldiers in the NY Songwriter Army. Just because he won't lie in the gutter the same way the rest of us do doesn't mean he can't wonder about the stars. The title track is kind of the halfway point of the record, and it's played so straight (pretty much just acoustic guitar, hi-hat & piano!), it reminds me of Clapton's MTV version of "Layla," all self-referential ("I flipped him like the devil / no one else would write that line") & stripped back, with a real guitar solo (is that John Kessel? Just curious) and everything. And after this little enticement to the sober to keep them listening (dude, we can't afford to be stoned all the time, eh), he then falls back off the level surface into the sparkly tinny guitar swirl of "Burn Your Body Down," which parks him in your left ear, sounding like he's had enough of New York City & doesn't want to be here or anywhere anymore, sounding just this much too tired to actually build himself a new life for him & his friends. It's nice for this old fart to see that the kids get all weary from time to time too. (People do get weary.) The happiest surprise for me was "Ballad of a Man Called No One." I'd heard him play it live a couple of times, and it sounded like little more than a slightly boastful little rant. Here, except for the frankly annoying tremolo that flows through the whole mix like you're listening to it through an electric fan, a defiant & angsty little blues song is revealed that I could totally hear Stevie Ray Vaughan doing (even though he can't because, well, you know). Grey cries and bends the lines like he's finally started telling his own story & not some character he's putting on for three minutes, and it's a revelation. He gets to I really wanna help you, but I'm lying on the outside looking uu-uu-uup, and it's hard to breathe out until he does first. The goddamned thing is freaky, although it would have been absolutely perfect if – oh yeah, I already mentioned the tremolo being annoying. Maybe Grey (& Spencer) just wanted to piss off the minimalists. The Village is crawling with 'em (when you're living in a shoebox with nothing but your guitar and an empty bar fridge, minimalism kinda comes naturally), but it doesn't have to be the only way. Grey can make a big sloppy record with maybe too many gadgets and a cast of thousands and have it still be a street-level songwriter's album, can't he? Can't he? Anyway, the greatest joy on the record is followed by the biggest disappointment. I had it in the back of my mind (bad idea, I know) that "Violent Jack" was going to wind up as the single, with its chuggachugga rhythm, Helter-Skelter lyrics and Horton Heat pace & cadence, it was a sure thing for some horror movie soundtrack (or at least college radio). But the whole song sounds like it was fed through Lach's overdrive pedal, and Grey's angry riddims wind up being all but indecipherable. And there's these computer-space noises that remind me of ELO or disco or something that boing-ng-ng & beeeee-yoop-oop-oop in between the squiggly slide guitars (which sound good, but there's a lot of them). Not to deny "Violent Jack" its inherent rockingness, though. Even with the mangling of it, I still have to pace my apartment like Rollins or Mike Tyson in the dressing room whenever I hear it. It took a long time for Crazy Like An Ambush to grow on me, but the investment in time has paid off. There's no shortage of wonderful sounds and lines and clevernesses and little moments of genuineness on this album. I just had to get used to the addled murk of a record that was made in a different frame of mind than the recent spate of perfectly fine albums from the New York Antifolk Scene that feel like they've been put out more as documents of their progenitors' times than as genuine musical explorations. I think Grey Revell should be congratulated for making this record. There are times I will actively seek it out to listen to. (Probably not during the day, though. Maybe while driving drunk.) This album feels like it was recorded in 1968, and it would sure sound excellent on vinyl. But what else could we expect from our Californian spiritual traveler pal than an abstract allegory on the state of his universe, love life, new city & all? And what chances have you taken recently? - Tony Hightower