2006-12 Vital Source Mag – December 2006
Born Yesterday
By Russ Bickerstaff Over the years, Milwaukee Rep resident acting company member Deborah Staples has played sparkling intelligence in a variety of different packages. In Garson Kanin’s Born Yesterday she’s playing a bright, hidden intelligence that makes for a fascinating centerpiece to the mid-century political comedy. Staples plays former chorus girl Billie Dawn, a beautiful, young woman following around millionaire blowhard Harry Brock (Steve Pickering). Billie joins Harry and the rest of his entourage in Washington DC, where he is looking to bribe the government into passing laws that will make his hugely profitable business even more profitable overseas. Harry’s lawyer (Tony DeBruno) has suggested that he be as pleasant and sociable as possible in his meeting with the well-greased Senator Hedges and his wife (Jim Baker and Rose Pickering). In an effort to seem more human than animal, Harry includes Billie on the social meeting. The problem is that, whenever Billie speaks she seems unsophisticated. This prompts Harry to hire a journalist (John Phillips) to educate Billie so that she can be more presentable to the congressmen he’s trying to bribe. Things, of course, get complicated and before long, Billie is falling for the journalist who is clearly falling for her as well. Billie begins to realize what kind of a sociopathic jerk Harry really is. Steve Pickering manages an impressively pleasant performance as Harry. There’s almost on operatic quality in the gravity of his slightly gravelly, percussive voice. He shouts quite a bit, but it comes across more as the music of drama than actual anger. This keeps the heavy bits of drama from ever completely weighing down the comedy while, at the same time, somehow managing a very credible, convincing performance. Staples’ performance as Billie has a great deal of texture and nuance. Even delivering the comedy early in the play as a vacuous, young woman we see that there’s more to her character than the script will allow. In subtle movements and glances, Staples foreshadows deeper elements that will come to the surface later on. When the journalist starts educating Billie, Staples performance goes beyond the “dumb-girl-becomes-smart” cliché to render a character who seems like a complete person. Staples has a great chemistry with Pickering that plays out its most fascinating elements when they aren’t even sharing dialogue. The play features the two alone onstage almost completely silent as they play out a few hands of Gin Rummy. Though it occurs at a relatively natural point in Kanin’s script, it takes a tremendous amount of courage to stop everything onstage while the two principle characters play cards and Pickering and Staples make it work spectacularly. Even if you are completely unfamiliar with the rules, you know exactly what’s going on without them ever having to explain it. It’s amazing execution. Kanin’s script doesn’t settle easily into one specific genre. The comedy here can be very light and lowbrow while in the midst of a plot that is very deep and serious. It’s a light character comedy […]
Dec 4th, 2006 by Vital Archives
100 hours in America
By In 1994, the Democrats lost control of a Congress awash in the same kind of scandals, unabashed cronyism, unmitigated fraud and unwarranted arrogance that were the Republicans’ downfall this past November. For years, there has been a slowly mounting chorus of voices clamoring for a change in what has been described as the Washington “culture of corruption.” So just like before, the American electorate has “thrown the bums out.” It’s a whole circle of life thing. Now, with the election behind them, the Democrats can turn their attention to governing, but caution may be the word of the day. The essential fact is, they didn’t win so much as the Republicans, and Bush in particular, lost. With that in mind, Americans can only hope that they live up to their promises and prove to the nation that there is an antidote to the right-wing, demagogic hate machine that has for 12 years eroded our economy, our personal freedoms, our well-being and our national and domestic security. Going into the election, it wasn’t clear if the Democrats would be able to effect much meaningful change even if successful in their efforts. Most analysts expected them to take the House, but the Senate, they said, would remain in the grip of the Republicans, resulting in gridlock. But with a narrow victory in the Senate and a strong margin in the House, the Democrats are now in a position to push many of their initiatives forward. Leading the charge is Nancy Pelosi, the first woman to be Speaker of the House. She intends to announce broad changes within the first 100 hours of the new Congressional session and has promised to bring an end to what she terms the “rich mans’ welfare state.” So what exactly is on the docket for the first 100 hundred hours of the 110th Congress? The first 24 hours: Under Republican rule, lobbying in Washington has grown to grotesque proportions. There are over 35,000 lobbyists in DC “buying” legislation at an estimated $200 million a month. Lobbying has sparked countless scandals and cost several members of Congress their careers, if not their freedom. The Republican majority has repeatedly blocked measures designed to curtail lobbying. Because of this, the Democrats have said that they will put new rules in place to “break the link between lobbyists and legislation.” This, they say, will help end the stranglehold that the Jack Abramoff/Tom DeLay K Street gang has had on the policy process. The second 24 hours: To date, less than 50 percent of the 9-11 Commission’s recommendations have been implemented, leaving ports, power plants, planes and us vulnerable. The Democrats plan to remedy this by enacting ALL of the remaining recommendations. “They [Republicans] claim to be the party of national security, yet they have failed to implement these vital recommendations to ensure the safety of our nation and our people,” John Kerry said during a recent interview with the Associated Press. The third 24 hours: In June, the minimum wage […]
Dec 1st, 2006 by Vital Archives
Harmony in contradiction
By Catherine McGarry Miller forty8 head chef Adam Swatloske, former high school linebacker, perennial Packers fan and rock music junkie, is the type of guy you’d expect to see warming a regular’s stool at the bar where he works. He’d never even tasted anything you’d call gourmet until he was 17 and got his first restaurant job at Eddie Martini’s washing dishes. Now, just seven lucky years later, he’s turning out food that’s tantalizing epicureans around town. Swatloske didn’t come from a family of foodies. His mother, who manages diagnostic imaging at St. Francis Hospital, was lost in the kitchen. “Mom and I joke about it,” her son says with a grin. “I got into cooking ‘cause she couldn’t and one of us had to do it. She made some damn good cookies, though.” “School was my deficit,” the Catholic Memorial alum admits. “I was good at cooking, football and partying. I’m not one to sit in an office; I need to be doing something. I’m high energy, but I also love my sleep.” Swatloske’s conversation today is peppered with highfalutin’ phrases like “food profiles,” but having grown up on tacos and lasagna, he’s still a fan of comfort food. “It’s all about making you feel good.” Andy Stiyer, then Executive Chef at Eddie Martini’s, showed a very green Swatloske the ropes. “Starting at a restaurant like that, you learn what good food really is or you don’t last,” he says. Stiyer’s Orange Peppercorn Beurre Blanc served with Ahi Tuna inspired his protégé with the sweetness and tang of the citrus accented with hot Sichuan pepper. Swatloske says, “I build my dish around the sauce instead of making the sauce for a dish.” After a long apprenticeship at Eddie Martini’s, Swatloske jockeyed about area restaurants. “A friend of mine who was at forty8 said he needed a hand,” he says. It was a perfect fit. “Every time you walk in you feel like you’re being hugged – you can wear whatever. I did the corporate thing, but it’s not really my style.” When his friend quit this past summer, Swatloske gladly took over the kitchen. Several months later, sous chef Ian Somerville, who is currently finishing his culinary program at MATC, joined the team. Adam Swatloske has the excited glow of youth as he describes his job. “We have complete freedom to make menu changes, to go to the farmers market. We leave entrees open for seasonal accents that change regularly. I like mixing sweet and savory in sauces. I like the crispness of fried won ton chips and the crust on our risotto cakes. Ian’s just the opposite. He likes smooth, creamy soups and purees. His cakes are nice and rich.” The back of the house at forty8 is a brotherhood of sorts. There are five in the kitchen including cook Jesus Almazon and Jesse and Juan, who are brothers. Swatloske calls Almazon his own personal Jesus. He’s the happiest, nicest guy. He’s always back there singing. He just […]
Dec 1st, 2006 by Cate Miller
John Sieger
By Blaine Schultz It would be very easy to take John Sieger for granted. It seems like the guy has been around forever, since the heyday of the R&B Cadets at Century Hall in the 80s to Semi Twang’s album on Warner Brothers to a move to Nashville and ultimately back to Milwaukee with his current Sub Continentals. A few years ago he began conducting songwriter workshops, though it is no secret local musicians have been taking mental notes at Sieger’s performances for years. His songwriting and guitar playing belies an omnivore’s musical appetite – from vintage New Orleans to The Beatles, from the reggae of The Harder They Come to Bob Dylan – and he does it all with his own style. No word on when his songs inspired by the 9/11 tragedy will be ready, but word on the street is a Semi Twang reunion may be in the cards. 1. What do you try to teach in your songwriting classes? I try to demystify songwriting and pull the curtains back to reveal the little, petty, manipulative tricks good songwriters use to bend you to their whims. I also try to disabuse anyone of the notion that poetry and songwriting are more than third cousins. Some of my favorite lyrics are truly crap, look at “Johnny Carson” off The Beach Boys’ Love You disc. Brian Wilson was paid in hamburgers to write that and it’s brilliant! 2. What have you learned from your students? Just how ingrained the love of music is and how it’s one of the things that makes us human. My songwriters are all optimistic and creative people who have often chosen a practical career path and accomplished a lot, professionally and personally. I am in awe of them. 3. If you could do the Semi Twang experience again, what would you change? Ouch! I would have read This Business Of Music and begged for fiscal restraint on the part of Warner Brothers Records. They were a spending machine and never met an expense in the making of Salty Tears that they didn’t embrace and then convince me to. Thing is, it was all recoupable… our money they were playing with and when we came up about a half a million short after selling 12 records, something had to give. 4. When did it dawn on you that you were able to write songs? When other people started recording them, including my buddy Paul Cebar, I thought maybe I had something. Then Dwight Yoakam sang “I Don’t Need It Done.” I felt like Otis Redding, who exclaimed upon hearing Aretha Franklin’s version of “Respect,” “That gal stole that song!” 5. Your son is a musician. how do you see his initial experiences differing from yours? It’s hard for me to stand back and not drain all the fun out of it by telling him everything I know, but I think I manage. He seems to be having a parallel experience to the one I had […]
Dec 1st, 2006 by Vital Archives
Mercy of a Storm
By Peggy Sue Dunigan New Year’s Eve, 1945. Snow is falling furiously, it’s almost midnight. George and Zanovia find the two hours preceding 1946 in a Midwest country club pool house to be infinitely colder than the weather outside in Mercy of a Storm, Next Act Theatre’s production that opened November 19. This performance spends a fascinating two hours dissecting a relationship struggling with love’s long awaited fulfillment and how to live with that love, elusive amidst the realities of day-to-day life. Social discrimination, prejudice, and family loyalties are all handled with a touch of humor and wit while this couple storms the pool house with anger and passion. Mary MacDonald Kerr, in her directorial debut, captures all the sexual tension, twists and turns in the script, and the touching, tender love George and Zanovia have for one another despite the events that could destroy them both. As Zanovia so aptly puts it in the second act, “I don’t want romance, I want love.” Romance vs. love. Cold outside (the winter weather) vs. warm inside (the summer pool house). Wealth vs. working class. Old vs. young. Divorce vs. marriage. This play is a study in contrasts that give the play contemporary meaning in a period setting. Jeffrey Hatcher, an accomplished playwright whose work has previously been produced on Milwaukee stages, subtly captures the conflicts of each contrast, with little resolution, through cleverly and passionately written dialogue. Everything is filtered through the personalities of George and Zanovia, both flawed and hurting, as Hatcher creates characters that he and the audience care about. James Pickering, in a welcome return to Next Act, is a wonderful George, displaying a depth in both his love for Zanovia and his daughter, Tootie. His ambiguity is palpable. Following an outstanding performance in the Stiemke’s Half-Life, Pickering again recreates a believable romantic lead through a unique role. Abbey Siegworth, as Zanovia, matches Pickering’s moves heartbeat to heartbeat as their emotions fluctuate between hot and cold. Her sassy sensuality coupled with genuine affection and compassion for George illuminates the stage. Pickering and Siegworth have a chemistry that evolves throughout the two acts. Chemistry is the key word that both charms and challenges in this production: between director and actors, script and performance and a beautifully recreated 1940’s set and the intimate stage. With Wisconsin’s winter weather turning colder outside, George and Zanovia heat up the inside of the Off Broadway Theatre for an exhilarating evening. As the play comes to a close with yet another one of its exciting twists, Zanovia enters the pool house for a final moment, seeking comfort and says, “It’s cold out there.” Next Act Theatre’s Mercy of a Storm ultimately warms the heart with the premise that it can be a cruel, cold world, inside and out, without one love worth fighting for.VS Mercy of a Storm continues through December 17 at the Off Broadway Theatre, 342 North Water Street. Contact www.nextact.org or 414-278-0765 for information or tickets.
Dec 1st, 2006 by Peggy Sue Dunigan
A Cudahy Caroler’s Christmas
By Russ Bickerstaff Stasch, Pee Wee, Zeke, Nellie and the rest of the Cudahy Carolers return again this Christmas as In Tandem Theatre presents another holiday season of regional musical comedy with A Cudahy Caroler’s Christmas. Having been unduly bounced out of the intimate performance space at the Walker’s Point Center for the Arts, In Tandem launches the hit holiday musical in the much more luxurious space that is the Marcus Center’s Vogel Hall. This year’s Cudahy Caroler Christmas is the same show that Milwaukee audiences have come to know and love in a substantially bigger space. However, the same show Anthony Wood wrote nearly half a decade ago struggles a bit to fill a bigger auditorium, suffering some small amount from the extra space. Lost somewhere in the transition to Vogel is the sense of immersion in musical comedy that is far bigger than the space it fills. While the auditorium has changed, the show’s content hasn’t. The show features all the old favorite Cudahy Caroler songs with the same old story. Chris Flieller returns to play old Stasch Zielinski who sets aside his differences with former best friend Pee Wee (the returning Joel Kopischke) to get the many estranged Cudahy Carolers back together for one more concert to be televised on local access cable. Other welcome returns to the cast include Kristen L. Pawlowski as Nellie,the lovely, aspiring Tommy Bartlett water ski queen and Ken Williams as as big, shy Zeke who has a tremendous, mildly perverse crush on her. As with previous seasons, the show sounds distinctly different than it has in the past as several new faces lend their voices to this year’s production. Linda Stieber makes a thoroughly enjoyable In Tandem debut as lonely stylist caroler Wanda. Far and away the most impressive is Alison Mary Forbes in the role of young, alcoholic librarian Trixie Schlaarb. The character always seemed to be the weakest one in the entire cast. A prim and nervous librarian who gets extremely wild when she gets drunk feels like something of an uninspired comedic space-filler. This is not Anthony Woods at his most inventive. However, Forbes takes Wood’s weakest character a lot further than she deserves to go. Forbes’ performance of the “God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen” parody is one of the more memorable performances from this year’s production. Wood gave the librarian some of the least funny moments in the musical, but Forbes manages to be staggeringly funnier than the material she’s given to perform here. Vogel Hall itself (its interior bearing some resemblance to the set of a 1970’s game show) seems slightly out of step with the production onstage. Chris Flieller’s set, which worked so well for so many years on a smaller stage, doesn’t work as well in Vogel. The set of rotating walls represent a number of different locations, but here they point forward at skewed angles, revealing other locations just as clearly to people near the far edges of the auditorium. Most of the […]
Dec 1st, 2006 by Vital Archives
Dickens In America
By Russ Bickerstaff As respected as authors are onstage, they are rarely thrown directly into the spotlight. When they are given the stage, the results can be disastrous. It may be a bit extreme and overly dramatic to say that lead actor James Ridge has to achieve the single best performance of the 2005 – 2006 Milwaukee theatre season in order for Dickens In America to be any good at all, but I just did. (And he does.) Seeing as how Ridge is the only actor performing in Milwaukee Chamber Theatre’s mid-season show, he has to be entertaining enough to carry an entire production. The fact that he’s playing Charles Dickens means that Ridge also has to live-up to the stature of a literary legend without looking exceedingly foolish. Ridge manages both of these feats, almost single-handedly providing a substantially hipper holiday alternative (or supplement, if you will) to the Milwaukee Rep’s annual mega-production of Dickens’ A Christmas Carol. Written by accomplished actor/playwright James DeVita, Dickens In America is a touching bit of historical drama surmising a public performance by the famous author in Milwaukee on his last tour of America. Nathan Stuber’s set is a lush, mid-19th century theatre setting. Red curtains and glass chandeliers reminiscent of the Pabst Theater adorn the stage. Footlights provide a striking effect as thick curtains draw back to reveal Ridge, buried somewhere beneath the distinctive hair and beard. Hovering visually somewhere between himself and his character, Ridge resembles a somewhat gaunt, hauntingly intense image of Dickens – the kind you’d see after reading a tattered copy of A Tale of Two Cities all night for a high school literature class. Ridge’s personal charisma as an actor fuels the performance. His eyes dart around the audience, drawing deep and disparate attentions to him with a gentleman’s charm. He recites Dickens’ work with an authors’ passion for and pride of his own work. He pauses at nearly perfect moments to affect intensity. Ridge delivers Dickens’ love of storytelling and theatrics in with infectious passion. There really isn’t anything that fans of Dickens aren’t already familiar with, but it’s a great pleasure to sit back, tilt the head, squint the eyes and picture that Ridge really is Dickens giving one last performance before he retires from the stage. Ridge brings a panoramic range of different British accents to the stage as he plays the theatrically inclined Dickens performing scenes from Pickwick Papers, David Copperfield, Oliver Twist and more. Ridge plays Dickens performing a rather large cast of distinctly different characters, as well. There may not be enough plot development in any given scene to provide Ridge the opportunity to portray much depth in any individual character, but the real accomplishment here is that none of them blur together. As with any show, however, some characters are more memorable than others. When Ridge performs bits from A Christmas Carol, clever ears may hear something familiar in Ridge’s portrayal of Scrooge. It may be coincidence or fanciful hearing […]
Dec 1st, 2006 by Vital Archives
Four years and a new day
By Dear Readers, This issue of VITAL marks the beginning of my fifth year as Editor. That, for the record, is longer than I’ve held any post-college job. I’ve mentioned before how I ended up here by accident at a time when I needed a new start, an opportunity to see what I was really made of. One’s perception of time is a funny, stretchy, contorted and contracted thing. On the one hand we’ve been barreling down the road at 90 miles per hour. On the other, I look at pictures of myself at my original “desk” in the storage room in the back of Bremen Café and can barely recall who I was then. I looked different (long hair, heavier, less gray), felt different (scared, excited, supremely daring) and had a different set of concerns than the woman who now resides at the big desk with the comfy chair in our groovy storefront office suite on Bremen Street. In late 2002 I was on a mission from God (to quote Elwood Blues) to bring VITAL to the people, the overwhelming majority of whom remained blissfully unconcerned with the efforts of our ragtag staff of interns and volunteers. In a way, times were simple then. And the statistical impossibility of our quest was almost comforting – who would ever blame us if we failed? Things are different now, and that’s an understatement. In four years, we have more than tripled our circulation, flipped from a tabloid to a magazine, created a truly good website that attracts readers from all over the world (check it out if you haven’t), developed partnerships in the community, gained a loyal (and, in a measure of our long-term potential, also a casual) readership and have seen many of our writers and photographers move on to tremendous opportunities that wouldn’t have been as available to them if not for their work at VITAL. I am gratefully the president of the Milwaukee Press Club, the oldest continuously operating press club in the Americas, and one of the nation’s finest. My parents are proud of me, not just for my potential, but because I’ve done something. In a way, it’s like living a dream. But with a measure of success comes exponential pressure and responsibility. There are more constituencies to satisfy, from the employees who need to get paid on time to the readers and city leaders who now expect that we actually produce something worthwhile. I even have a dress code for meetings and Press Club functions. Sometimes I bring a suit and change out of my cowboy boots in the bathroom for business functions. Who would have thought? On a very microcosmic level, my situation reflects that of the Democrats. (Bear with me; I know this is a gross oversimplification.) They needed a new start. They worked their plan amidst skepticism and even derision (sometimes from me) and they succeeded in taking the Congress. Heady stuff. But what comes next is much more important. Now they […]
Dec 1st, 2006 by Vital Archives
A Christmas Carol
By Russ Bickerstaff The Milwaukee Rep returns to another Christmas season with yet another production of Charles Dickens’ popular classic A Christmas Carol. With a cast of over 20 and enough scenery and props to comfortably furnish a rather large home, A Christmas Carol is an annual theatrical event attended by far more people than any other single show in Milwaukee. This is the Rep’s fourth outing with the shiny, new million dollar production that first graced the Pabst in 2003 and things are looking every bit as sharp as they did three years ago with a pacing that feels just a bit more streamlined than it was last year, even if they didn’t drop a single thing from the script adapted by Joseph Hanreddy and Edward Morgan. In her third year of directing the show, Judy Berdan is at the head of a fine tuned theatrical holiday behemoth. Everything seems just a bit more polished this year than it was in 2005. Even Marjorie Bradley Kellogg’s dark, moody set for Christmas Future with its dramatically forced perspective seems to have lost some graffiti since the last time it was lowered. Milwaukee Rep Resident Actor Lee Ernst resumes the role of the tight-fisted, old Ebenezer Scrooge whose cold emotional detachment was brought about by psychologically damaging formative events he experienced as a young man when he looked a lot more like Gerard Neugent. It’s probably all in my head, but the difference between Neugent as young Scrooge and Ernst as old Scrooge seemed particularly drastic this time around. Neugent comes across with energetic, youthful hard work being tempered into cold ambition. Ernst comes across as miserly old age come overcome by its own comedy. The years between youth and old age have clearly not been very kind to old Eb. Mark Corkins resumes his role as Jacob Marley, the ambitious, brutally efficient businessman who draws Scrooge into an addiction for wealth so strong that a host of spirits are forced to stage a spectral intervention in order for him to regain the slightest shred of human generosity. Corkins’ stage presence is every bit as powerful as Marley’s ghost, aided by Barry G. Funderburg’s haunting sound design. As far as individual characters and performances go, this year’s production isn’t substantially different than any other in recent memory. Those who can’t make it this year are only missing out on yet another performance of an old holiday classic. The cast hasn’t changed much in the past three years, but there are always a few differences each December. For the first time, Melinda Pfundstein joins husband Brian Vaughn this year to play husband and wife Fred and Catherine. Eva Balistrieri returns for her ninth consecutive year with the show but this year’s performance as Martha Cratchit will be her last, as she is going off to college next year. Rep interns Donte Fitzgerald and DeRante Parker pick up small parts around the edges this season’s production. Laura Gordon returns to play Mrs. Cratchit […]
Dec 1st, 2006 by Vital Archives
A Winter Harvest
By Evan Solochek During the dreadfully short-lived Milwaukee summer, nestled between the bustling intersection of North Avenue and Kenilworth Place, local artists set up shop in the Beans & Barley parking lot. For many, it’s their only source of income and therefore their livelihoods depend on a strong summer return to get them through the lean, and exhaustive, winter. It was this reality that inspired Laura Richard to launch East Side Artist’s Boutique – Shop to Stop Holiday Hunger. “The idea initially came to me at the end of the East Side Open Market season as some of the artists discussed how difficult it is in the winter when there are few opportunities to show their work,” Richard says. “I wanted to do something to help them.” However, local artists are not the only group that this 32-year-old Riverwesterner has spent much of her life helping. She currently works part-time at the Metropolitan Milwaukee Fair Housing Council, a nonprofit that promotes fair housing practices in Wisconsin. She has also recently started her own business, Laura Richard Consulting, which does event planning, fund raising, marketing and promotions for nonprofits and local businesses. The East Side Artist’s Boutique will feature around 30 regional artists. In addition to offering these artists a winter market for their work, each will donate one piece for a silent auction with 100 percent of the proceeds going to the Hunger Task Force of Milwaukee; same goes for the $5 cover. Friday evening, Beans & Barley, Twisted Fork, Trocadero, Café Hollander, Balzac, Hi Hat Lounge and Ichiban will be donating appetizers while Beans & Barley will also offer wine for sale, a portion of the proceeds of which will also go to the Hunger Task Force. For the last 30 years, the Hunger Task Force of Milwaukee has been a voice for the hungry, promoting socially sound policies with the aim of ending hunger in our community. In Wisconsin, according to the Task Force, 9 percent of households are “food insecure,” which means that they are “uncertain of having or unable to acquire enough food for all family members because they had insufficient money or other resources.” Additionally, in Milwaukee, according to the 2004 U.S. Census, 26 percent of Milwaukeeans live in poverty, which ranks seventh in large U.S. cities. For Richard, supporting them was an easy decision. “Beyond the obvious that they help feed Milwaukeeans who are hungry and sometimes have to choose between rent and food, the Hunger Task Force is active in advocacy work to achieve positive and far-reaching changes in our community,” she says. “My husband and I have taken to giving to the Hunger Task Force for the holidays in lieu of exchanging gifts since they need the money more than we need the ‘stuff.’ I knew if I did a fundraiser for them, I could give them so much more this year. That‘s how I mixed it together.” Richard strives to live her life selflessly, driven by the immortal words of Gandhi: […]
Dec 1st, 2006 by Vital Archives
The Decemberists
By Nikki Butgereit Those still afraid that The Decemberists’ move to Capitol Records from Kill Rock Stars indicates a possible sell-out need listen no further than the second track. For 12 glorious minutes, “The Island – Come & See/The Landlord’s Daughter/You’ll Not Feel The Drowning” moves through musical styles and moods ranging from 70s blues to classic Decemberists shanties to close with the melancholy repetition of “Go to sleep now, little ugly / Go to sleep now, you little fool / Forty winking in the belfry / You’ll not feel the drowning.” As is common in the loosely braided indie-rock genre, The Crane Wife is organized under a concept, recreating the Japanese folk tale of the same name. Punctuated by themes of love, trust, greed and loss, the music dramatically weaves calming vocals with hammered dulcimer and hurdy-gurdy. Amidst the antiquity, modernity pops up occasionally with a catchy la-la, na-na chorus. The occasional appearance of the electric guitar stands out. “The Perfect Crime #2” sounds like a Talking Heads outtake, and though quiet enough to maintain the tone of the record, it still manages to rock. The Decemberists create such layered music that second and third listens are required to feel the full effect. And while the music might seem outmoded on the surface, deeper listening reveals a body of work that is taking indie-rock to a new level, one composition at a time. VS
Dec 1st, 2006 by Vital Archives
