Arts & Culture
Starting Here, Starting Now
By Tracy Doyle If you’re looking for some light, summertime musical fare, check out In Tandem Theatre’s production of Starting Here, Starting Now, which captures the many phases of romantic involvement, everything from waiting for the love of your life to come along to the wretched throes of the breakup. A musical revue written by long time collaborators Richard Maltby Jr. and David Shire, Starting Here, Starting Now is a collection of songs about love written by the duo and compiled in 1977. Maltby and Shire’s collected body of work include the Broadway musical Baby, the Fats Waller revue Ain’t Misbehavin’, and the score to cinematic success Saturday Night Fever. This is the first time this show has been staged in its entirety in Milwaukee, and director Jane Flieller did an amazing job rearranging the order of the songs to give it a semblance of a dramatic arc. The songs were grouped into categories such as dating, proposing, parting and starting, which let the audience identify with the storyline and take us on an emotional roller coaster of love. The night opened with surprising David Lynchian flair. The stage has been beautifully transformed by set designer/ stage manager Chris Flieller into a giant piano, with a trio of musicians set in the upper right corner. The lights were dim and the show hadn’t started yet but Mr. Flieller, probably after performing some of his stage managerial duties, sauntered across the room in his dashing tuxedo, snapping his fingers to the beat of the band and brought to life a two minute scene straight out of Twin Peaks. Mr. Flieller was a staple throughout the production, moving set pieces and also functioning as bartender, drunken confidant and purse snatching comic relief. An ensemble of only three singers, these performers filled the room with their light and cheery voices and smiles. Taking turns with the songs, Mary C. DeBattista, Marty McNamee and Kathleen A. Miller brought to life a wide variety of music with consistent performances. The section titled “Parting” was the most impassioned, with stellar performances of “Autumn” and “Crossword Puzzle.” A night sprinkled with polite applause from audience members after each rendition, I let out a grand “whoo-hoo!” after McNamee’s bitter, heartfelt “I Don’t Remember Christmas.” The ensemble harmonized well and the choreography was simple but appropriate for the space and breadth of songs. Overall the show was enjoyable although it ended with a whimper compared to the bang of the mid-section. For a night of good music and light-hearted fun, go check it out. And congrats to In Tandem’s recent acquisition of their own performance space, look for them next year at Tenth and Wisconsin. VS In Tandem Theatre’s production of Starting Here, Starting Now runs thru June 10 in Broadway Theatre Center’s intimate studio theatre. Tickets and information can be found at www.intandemtheatre.com or by calling 414-444-2316.
Jun 1st, 2007 by Vital Archives
VITAL’S 2007 Photo Contest Winners
I think photography as the America of “Art.” It is not a perfect analogy; photography doesn’t arrest undocumented artworks and detain them indefinitely, nor is it engaged in an endless quest to start wars against developing art forms whilst alienating and disenfranchising photographs at home. Photographs are sometimes bought and sold to the highest bidder, but that’s not what I mean, either. Photography is a highly democratic art form. Not everyone is born with the fine motor skills to learn how to draw or the craftsmanship necessary to sculpt or carve wood. But most people can figure out how to press a button on a camera. With a light meter and a little practice, even a manual camera is intuitive enough to understand. The ever-expanding accessibility of digital equipment has even made it possible to eliminate the complicated and costly process of developing your own prints. Now all you need is a printer, or someone whose printer you can use and – voilà – a masterpiece. The ease of photography invites experimentation and ingenuity. Like America, nothing is guaranteed – not everyone can afford those fancy macro lenses, and not everyone has an eye for composition – but photography strives for equality of opportunity. And frankly, that makes the old institutions a little bit nervous. If you were an oil painting, you’d be nervous, too. Look at what happened to Great Britain. And in the grand scheme of things, photography is a pretty young way to make art, and even though a photograph is one of the world’s most powerful tools for telling a story or conveying an image, photography is still fighting for its credibility in the art world. Not everyone trusts photography. It’s too instant. It’s too mechanical. The artist is too far removed from the art. Or so it is still sometimes said. This year, in the spirit of opportunity, we awarded two different awards for each category – Best Professional and Best Amateur. The judges – Cori Coffman, Executive Director of the Eisner Musuem of Art and Design; Deone Jahnke, a local professional photographer who works all over the country and Sonja Thomsen, adjunct professor at MIAD and head of Milwaukee’s Coalition of Photographic Arts – swore to be fair and impartial administrators of their duties. They rated each photograph blind before the law (well, they could see, but it was anonymous) and on video camera themselves, for all to witness at our second Random Exposure opening on June 14 at the Eisner, which will include over 60 of our favorite entries, democratically displayed for your viewing enjoyment. There will also be music, food and more. Look for details on page 18. In your winners, you will see testament to the radical and boundless fruits of this art for the people: color, shadows, truth, comedy, tragedy, apathy and beauty. PORTRAIT BEST IN SHOW Best Professional Jessica Kaminski “Girl in Doorway” Jessica Kaminski received her BFA in Fine Art Photography from MIAD in 2001. Since then, she […]
Jun 1st, 2007 by Amy Elliott
Various Artists
By Nikki Butgereit Anchored In Love: A Tribute to June Carter Cash is the musical counterpart to John Carter’s biography of his mother. Clearly, this album was a labor of love, not just for the grieving son, but for the artists and relatives who came together to celebrate Carter Cash’s musical legacy. The album opens with Sheryl Crow and Willie Nelson’s duet of “If I Were a Carpenter.” The song evokes June’s relationship with Johnny Cash, and the contrast between the older and younger artists throughout reinforces the tone of the album – today’s country music principals honoring the music of the past. To that end, Brad Paisley sheds all traces of modern country on his cover of “Keep On The Sunny Side.” The plucky banjo and lilting vocals of The Peasall Sisters and Billy Bob Thornton’s husky spoken word on “Road to Kaintuck” form just the right juxtaposition to elicit memories of an old-time radio show. But the album’s standout track is Elvis Costello’s slowed-down version of “Ring of Fire,” which removes all of the gritty urgency of Johnny Cash’s version and turns the song back into a true ballad. The inclusion of “Will the Circle Be Unbroken” reinforces the strong impact that June Carter Cash and her family had on folk and country music. The songs are classic, and the lyrics and melodies as quaint as they are strong, much like the woman herself. The Carter family’s footprint on the landscape of modern country is large and deep, and Anchored In Love is a fitting tribute to an influential voice. VS
Jun 1st, 2007 by Vital Archives
Patience
For as long as there has been art, there have been those who have taken the love of aesthetics and beauty to nauseating extremes. In 1881, Gilbert and Sullivan took a satirical jab at artistic pretentiousness with Patience. Today, 126 years later, The Skylight Opera Theatre revisits this classic musical in a production that carries into June. It’s a pleasant, fast-paced staging that the Skylight has polished quite nicely. The radiant Niffer Clarke stars as the simple milkmaid after which the show is named. Patience knows little of and cares little for romantic love yet is nonetheless pursued by two different men. The effeminate Reginald Bunthorne (Gary Briggle) is a poet of extreme pretentiousness who quite readily captures the attentions of all the wealthy girls in the tiny village, but he longs for the one who has no interest in him. Briggle is memorable as the ostentatious poet who cares more for the attentions of his audience than his art. Unable to feel anything but confusion for the deliberately obtuse Bunthorne, Patience talks of love with a friend. She seems to be the only single woman in town who doesn’t know what it is firsthand. In the course of the conversation, Patience remembers a time when she had feelings for a slightly older boy she used to play with as a child. As luck would have it, he shows up and she is smitten with romantic feelings for the first time in her life. His name is Archibald Grosvenor (Norman Moses) and he has loved her since he was a child. However, all who lay eyes on him have an inflated sense of his beauty. Like Bunthorne, Grosvenor is a poet of the highest imaginable aesthetics who is, of course, a cripplingly beautiful person. It is with great disappointment that Patience begins to question her love for Grosvenor. True love, she believes, must be truly selfless and one could never be selfless when loving someone of such overwhelming beauty. His beauty must belong . . . to the world. It would be an act of selfishness to demand his exclusive attentions and so Patience’s first love is a tragic one. Grosvenor is crestfallen, but the stress of the plot works in his favor, as his beauty is, of course, at odds with Bunthorne’s. The two are thus embroiled in a conflict that carries much of the rest of the story. It’s all a great deal of fun. The Chamber Theatre delivers deftly on the wit and speed of Gilbert and Sullivan in song and dialogue. Costuming by Karin Kopischke is impressive here and there is an elaborate simplicity in the design, which compliments the ornate, yet functional set by Peter Dean Beck. As entertaining as it is, the production as a whole feels a bit held back. This is really written to be a Gilbert and Sullivan with teeth and there are moments that are designed to really skewer the lofty insincerity of those who use art as a status-inducing […]
Jun 1st, 2007 by Russ Bickerstaff
Black Strobe
By Ally Berndt Norwegian death metal. Gothic French electro. ‘80s electronic body music. Something totally different. Any or all of the above can be ways used to describe Black Strobe. Burn Your Own Church – “Brenn Di Ega Kjerke” in Norwegian – is Black Strobe’s latest album, and while all 11 tracks reflect the group’s Depeche Mode and ‘80s rock influences, most also represent a darker, trance-like mood. The sound is good, but probably best appreciated if you’re hopped up at a Euro rave. “Blood Shot Eyes” is a quirky song that’s mixed well and puts the synthesizer to great use, yet sounds oddly reminiscent of the Super Mario Brothers theme if set against Norwegian metal. Included on the album is a cover of Bo Diddly’s “I’m a Man.” It’s bluesy but more hyped up – a little bit out there, but enjoyable nonetheless. And if Rammstein put together an ‘80s house mix, I’m pretty sure it would sound very much like “Not What I Need,” with its deep half-spoken lyrics in Euro-metal drag. The last two tracks – “Last Club on Earth” and “Crave for Speed” – are by far the best, featuring not only the strongest vocals, but also some great piano work. It’s a welcome switch from synth and showcases Black Strobe’s low-key side. Burn Your Own Church is a decent album with a lot of great production work; the mixes are actually the best part. There could’ve been a little more guitar and a little less of the often over-powering keyboards and synthesizers, but overall Black Strobe has put together a well-rounded record that pulls elements from many styles of music and then lays them over acid-infused beats. Americans should definitely check it out, if only for the fact that it’s just not your everyday electro mix. VS
Jun 1st, 2007 by Vital Archives
Waukesha’s new Majestic Cinema and Palladium dinner theater
Marcus Theaters took a calculated risk opening up the colossal Majestic Cinema (770 N. Springdale Road, Waukesha) over the May 4th weekend, not only as a move to bolster attendance in an era of home theaters with surround-sound and HD/Blue-Ray technology, but also in location and philosophy. Set not far off from the now-demolished Westown and now-defunct West Point theaters, the Majestic is seated on the farthest edge of an industrial complex off the back side of a Home Depot and Sam’s Club. But rather than stick with the familiar spartan, low-ceiling multiplexes that have become a recognizable mainstay for the Marcus corporation theaters in the past 25 years, this 16-screen affair – two of them ‘UltraScreens’ and another a dinner theater called the AT&T Palladium, which will be detailed further along – is a throwback to the art deco days of the cinema house. Starting from the outside, gone is the towering and lit signboard listing movies, in favor of reading the times off the internet, outside posters and electronic marquees over the ticket stations. Forgivably, because there was a rush to get it open for the premiere of Spider-Man 3, the Marcustheatres.com website did not have a working phone number until Friday. Even then, only one automated message worked. You also are not able to purchase show tickets online (as of this writing) as they work out the programming kinks. A giant neon-lined overhang (think: Vegas casino) guides those who want to keep their date dry while they park – or they can use the $3.00 valet service. For once, however, the parking area is well-conceived and the walk to the front door is not necessarily interminable. Once inside and past the long ticket lines, the main lobby opens up to a grand affair. Anyone who has ventured to the new Marcus Renaissance in Sturtevant will recognize the new standard architecture and interior design being adopted for the movie complexes. In the center of the room sits a baby grand piano surrounded by leather sofas and palm trees. The piano mysteriously waits for someone to play it, but it is unlikely the harried and tuxedo wearing employees have the time. On the left is a separate pizza bistro called Zaffiro’s and to the right a Stone Creek Coffee dominated by ice cream shop offerings. The concession stand runs almost the length of the room, illuminated from below by tanks of popcorn. Food offerings here run the gamut from traditional sweet and salty snacks to more complete fast-food offerings. While you wait in line, many flat-screen plasmas distract from the high food prices with previews of coming attractions. Got a kid in tow? The Majestic offers a party room for birthdays and, more importantly, a chamber off the lobby for babysitting services. However, on its first Saturday open the room was dark and empty save for a desk, a pair of handheld buzzers ready to call you back from the show if your kid has a tantrum and a […]
Jun 1st, 2007 by Brian Jacobson
Long Day’s Journey into Night
Humor can draw anyone into a theatre, but it’s the darkness that really excites the imagination. Eugene O’Neil’s Long Day’s Journey Into Night is one of the great classics of dark American theatre. Under the direction of Heidi Mueller Smith, Cornerstone Theatre Company presents the classic in the basement of the Brumder Mansion. As everyone settles into their seats for the evening, Ruth Williams and Sandy Stehling animate the space with a traditional Irish tune. Gradually, the play settles over the stage. There’s no mistaking that this is going to be a long, dark journey into the inner social dynamics of a particularly dark, iconic American family. Thankfully, with Cornerstone Theatre it’s a trip to the theatre featuring some of the best acting in one of the smallest performances spaces in greater Milwaukee. Cotter Smith stars as family patriarch James Tyrone – an aging actor past his prime who has made a small fortune for himself, but nonetheless tours during the theatre season. It’s August of 1912 and it would appear to have been a very long summer. Smartly dressed with sharp features and meticulously manicured facial hair, Smith cuts a darkly charismatic figure in the role. There’s a mixture of weariness and restlessness in the way Smith carries himself here. Smith’s apparent darkness as James is offset by Michelle Waide’s performance as his wife Mary. O’Neil places Mary as something of a central enigma in the script. Waide’s performance here is particularly clever. She seems to hold a great deal of casual poise, but we can tell that somewhere in the background of her apparent stability lies the hazy static of unhealthy disorder. She’s swept it all into the background of her personality, but it gradually comes to prominence as the play progresses. Waide deftly rides the emotional contours of O’Neil’s script, only letting enough emotional distress slip out to make it to the next scene. Ken T. Williams and Steven Strobel play James and Mary’s sons, Jamie and Edmund. Williams is pleasantly cynical as the older son who has returned home to help out around the house. Being fully aware and at least marginally open about all of the negativity floating around in the family’s closets, Jamie comes across as being one of the darker people in the play. Williams lends a considerable amount of depth and compassion to that darkness, which holds up his end of the play quite well. Edmund, the younger brother, is suffering from a potentially life-threatening ailment. Strobel plays Edmund with the overwhelming presence of a turn of the century slacker. His polite, unassuming presence makes it easy to sympathize with him. Rachel Williams rounds out the cast as Cathleen, the young, Irish housekeeper with a serviceable Irish accent. She plays off the rest of the family dynamic quite well as a disinterested third party. O’Neil has Cathleen surfacing from the rest of the family on brief occasions. On the whole, the ensemble plays out the emotional landscape of the play with more […]
Jun 1st, 2007 by Russ Bickerstaff
Milwaukee Short Film Festival reels up its 9th season
It’s with some irony that the decaying relationship between Time Warner Cable and the local public access outlet (MATA Community Media) helped foster the physical existence of the Milwaukee Short Film Festival, and even more ironic that the internet – well known for stealing eyes away from theaters and television – has helped the local showcase become more popular. Festival founder and director Ross Bigley first showcased local filmmakers’ short submissions – each narrative run between 2 to 18 minutes – for several years on public access in the mid-1990s. After a short break, the festival moved to area coffeehouses before finally landing at its present venue in the Times Cinema (5906 W. Vliet St., Wauwatosa) in 2004. The 2007 series now starts with an unusual feature attraction at the Astor Theater (1696 N. Astor St., Milwaukee) Saturday June 9 at 4 p.m. and continues Sunday June 10 at the Times with a 4 p.m. retrospective and main contest showings at 7 p.m. The rapid ascent of the internet as marketer and community tool actually helped spread the word about the festival. Now entries come all the way from Los Angeles, New York, Toronto and London. MSFF has received notices from magazines and websites and features a judging panel of several accomplished members of the entertainment industry. A $1000 juried grand prize was created by previous festival sponsors and has remained by popular demand along with a separate “audience award,” both to be determined at the event. The monetary prize comes directly from entry fees and sales – so the showcase is not technically a money-making venture. Bigley and friends do it for the love of film and storytelling. MSFF’s growth can be most easily attributed to the loyalty of supporters and now two other events: one is a Sunday afternoon exposition at the Times Cinema featuring “Best Of” entries from a 10-year span by such known artists as Dan Wilson (Leavings), Malona P. Voigt (Chicxulub) and Michael John Moynihan (Take a Chance and Happiness is a Long Shot). The other, and more experimental, event takes place the day prior, way over on the east side of town. The Astor Theater plays host to a special free premiere showing of Realization by Chicago’s Splitpillow. The five-year-old non-profit film company’s concept was to create a feature-length film broken down into seven chapters, with each segment written and directed by different crews all utilizing a continuing thread. Also, different actors play the same characters in each segment, creating a very heady concept film. According to Splitpillow, the plot revolves around “a lovesick physicist trying to complete his father’s unfinished work to impress the girl of his dreams.” Official entries in Sunday’s main event are as widely varied in length as they are tone or subject matter, yet most of them promise to not be the typical summer multiplex film. Some highlights should include: The Furry Revolt, by Milwaukee Institute of Art and Design graduate Jessica Bayliss, is a brief stop-motion animation piece […]
Jun 1st, 2007 by Brian Jacobson
Five Women Wearing the Same Dress
Writer/Director Alan Ball has met with considerable success in film and TV. His film American Beauty won an Academy Award while his TV series Six Feet Under garnered him two Golden Globes and no less than six Emmys. Before any of that, however, Ball earned a degree in theatre. In 1993 he wrote a comedy for the stage about a group of bridesmaids in Tennessee and Sunset Playhouse presents its production of that very play as the penultimate show of its season. Bialystock and Bloom co-founder Jonathan West directs the Sunset production of Ball’s Five Women Wearing the Same Dress. It’s the story of five bridesmaids who seek refuge from a wedding reception in an upstairs bedroom. There’s very little plot here beyond the personalities of each of the women as they become better acquainted. While the character development feels a bit forced and an amateurish attempt to tie everything together with some of moral about the nature of love stains the ending, for the most part Ball lets the conversation between the five women become the play. Ball has a particularly shrewd sense of humor in language that is the real center of the comedy. Everything beyond the dialogue is just there to give it a place to be. A clever writer in his own right, West’s direction here has an interesting attention to detail and a particularly deft sense of how dialogue-centered comedy works on stage. The cast consists almost entirely of the five young bridesmaids. Actresses reflect the relative ages of their characters pretty well, but there is a bit of confusion as to how old everyone is, as they all appear to be pretty much the same age: quite young, but not in high school. Southern accents also mar things a bit, as no one here manages an authentic accent for the entire length of the play. Other than that, the performances here are all noteworthy with a few instances of real comedic inspiration. The bedroom belongs to Meredith Marlow: sister of the bride played by Victoria Hudziak. Hudziak is bitter and annoyed with the whole wedding and has escaped to her room in an effort to get at least mildly stoned so that the whole affair can be a bit more bearable. Hudziak holds the comedy of bitterness quite well, but very little can be done when Ball tries to fuse too much darkness into the character. Before Meredith enters, Frances, the innocent, religious cousin of the bride, sneaks into the room to engage in a bit of physical comedy. Ball doesn’t provide very convincing depth for what is essentially a generic religious stereotype. Actress Nikki Hoch finds a sweet humanity in the character, nonetheless. Hoch’s comedic presence is subtle but powerfully effective whenever she’s onstage. Not long after we meet Frances and Meredith, Trisha enters. Trisha is an old friend of the bride who is fiercely independent. Elizabeth M. Keefe plays Meredith in a magnetic performance. She’s had many men, but has never felt […]
Jun 1st, 2007 by Russ Bickerstaff
Hot summer in the city
Lesley Kagen is looking out the front window of Restaurant Hama, the fine Japanese establishment her and husband Peter Knapp have operated out of the Audubon Court in Bayside for almost 10 years. But this is not a feature about the fine tempura and fried calamari we will feast on in a few minutes. “Piaskowski,” Kagen interjects with another local family name. Her voice is comforting and level as she continues to identify familiar Brew City names and places. It’s a voice perfect for radio commercials – which Kagen did on the west coast for over a decade. But this is not a feature about past successes in television and voiceover work. “I mean, this is definitely a Milwaukee book,” Kagen continues, and then wrinkles her brow within the context. The Vliet Street characters in her debut novel Whistling in the Dark, published by North American Library (Penguin Books), have remarkable depth. The languid summer of 1959 passes by typically with Popsicles, movies and neighborhood games. But this is not a book about how whimsical, simple and tranquil those times were. “A lot of people like to remember the ‘50s, and say ‘oh wow the ‘50s, it was so innocent.’ But in some ways it wasn’t, especially for girls,” Kagen says. “Girls were treated very differently back then. You were a 2nd-class citizen. Boys were important and girls weren’t. And that led to some situations that were not nice and not healthy.” The main heroine of Whistling is 10-year-old Sally O’Malley, a fiercely loyal and smart girl who becomes an unwilling shamus during one summer dotted with personal tragedy and frustration. After promising her dad before he died to always look after her younger sister, Troo, Sally’s world is thrown asunder when her mother is hospitalized, her stepfather turns to the bottle and a murderer/molester appears on the scene. Highly imaginative, Sally is pretty sure of two things: who the killer is and that she’s next on his list. Now she has no choice but to protect herself and Troo as best she can, relying on her own courage and the kindness of her neighbors. For all the dark corners and mysteries in Kagen’s seeming thriller, however, she was stunned during the many accolades the novel received when the Mystery Guild named it an alternate for book-of-the-month. “I thought why? I would say that it’s a literary novel with an element of mystery as opposed to a true genre mystery. I don’t think it has that feel to it at all,” says Kagen. “I don’t think that Sally is thinking about solving the crime. She’s more concerned with getting the information for keeping her and her sister safe. That’s a real different goal.” Another neat trick that binds the book is the committed narrative voice, which is written in the first person from Sally’s perspective and vernacular ability. “I wanted people to remember that children are different than adults,” she says. “They see things differently. The strange ways that words […]
Jun 1st, 2007 by Brian Jacobson
Rooming House
With Milwaukee being host to so many productions of plays written by people in other parts of the country, it’s always nice to see something new written by a local playwright. Early this summer, Olsen Arts Theatre Group opened Rooming House, written and directed by local playwright Christel Olsen. The play is a comedy about a group of people living in…well…a rooming house. Kim Ballou stars as Geraldine Rennelli – a woman who runs…wait for it…a rooming house. Geraldine, who is known to her psychologically diverse boarders as “Ms. Geri,” is a tough, charismatic woman who seems to be quite respected by all who meet her. There’s a lot of comic potential in the many strange personalities inhabiting a domestic space like this. Brilliant comedy can come when the weird is juxtaposed against the equally weird but, unfortunately, Olsen and company deliver on so little of it that it hardly seems worth the effort. Sadly, Rooming House isn’t that good. Ballou performs quite well as uber-mom to a strange collection of characters, many of whom have a great deal of comedic depth. Occasionally we even see the cast of actors grasp fleeting moments of this depth. For the most part, however, the cast seems all too conscious of the fact that it is on stage and not conscious enough of what’s supposed to be going on in the play. The space at Bucketworks doesn’t help, either. The acoustics in the performance space are offensively bad. This makes it particularly difficult to hear actors who lack enough stage experience to know how to properly project their voices. If Rooming House was a straight drama, the acoustic problem would probably end there. The fact that it’s a comedy makes things all the worse. In order for comedy to work there needs to be something like a coherent punch line. If the punch line isn’t delivered with the kind of strength it needs AND the space is muffling what’s being said, there may be too many obstacles for laughter to actually occur. The lack of clarity in the dialogue is an ongoing problem throughout that affects every aspect of the story. Comedic and dramatic elements that aren’t always particularly well defined in the script are further confused by self-conscious performances that fail to deliver the right emphasis at the right times. Rooming House isn’t a play so much as the dream of one. People sleep walk through performances culled from a script that isn’t quite polished enough to develop the kind of glossy pop comedy for which Olsen seems to be aiming. All this would seem like wasted effort were it not for the fact that the dream is so clearly visible. The final significant scene between Ballou and Brenda Riley (as her next door neighbor Leslie Bufano) is the one of the best. The two characters finally connect and there’s a real feeling of genuine emotion. It should be pointed out that Rooming House is not an aggressively bad play. It’s a […]
Jun 1st, 2007 by Russ Bickerstaff
The Sea and Cake
Since their debut in 1993, Chicago’s The Sea and Cake have quietly grown into hometown favorites alongside Tortoise, creating pop that’s one part ambient, one part jazz, one part rock and all parts pure. This unique sound, anchored by guitarist Sam Prekop’s trademark wispy-as-clouds vocals, has evolved from notional indie pop into this consistently eclectic mixture since their first electronic dabblings on the 1997 album, The Fawn. Flash forward to the new millennium. 2003’s One Bedroom, which perfected jazzy indie-tronica, was adored by fans who were left to hang thereafter with a band hiatus. Thus, their newest, Everybody, is not only welcomed personally by fans who have longed to hold another Sea and Cake concoction in their hands, but also in general, because the band is showing their ability to grow without completely abandoning their sound circa 1997-2003. With Everybody, the band builds on past musical success by boomeranging back to their roots and catching some of the fundamental aspects that first garnered it attention. Perhaps this was possible due to the help of producer Brian Paulson (Slint, Wilco) who took the reins so the band could concentrate fully in the studio (drummer John McEntire previously did all the band’s production work). Outlining the songs with the organic elements of a true rock outfit such as fuzzed-out guitars ( “Crossing Line” ), clean beat-keeping drums ( “Middlenight” ), filling in the lines with the pretty-as-bells guitars of Prekop and Archer Prewitt and then mixing it up with subtle syncopation and glossing it over with Prekop’s melody-challenged but soothing voice, The Sea and Cake take us back to their beginning. McEntire and Erik Claridge (bass) still manage to add the signature noodling ( “Exact to Me, “Left On” ) that makes this band sound so much like…well… themselves. Everybody hits that gratifying sweet spot. It’s got enough ‘oomph’ not to wimp out yet retains the subtle jazzy elements that will make this album one of the most delicious slices of pop baked goods to satisfy fans in years. VS
Jun 1st, 2007 by Erin Wolf
