Musea Art Review #40 Listen The Night CD
TomHendricks474
Title: Listen The Night
What is it? 8 Song CD by “what Rwe” that mixes
spoken word and music
Technical Quality: Recording quality is very high.
Cover graphics, average. Guitar work is exceptional.
Talking Voice is very good.
Innovative Quality: Above average in the unusual mix
of repeated poetic phrases and story telling; plus , innovative
guitar work that I describe as folk/jazz or bluegrass/jazz.
Review: Extraordinary guitar player Michael Panasuk,
does some amazing standard guitar work (and some rock
band arrangements) to illustrate the poetic storytelling of
Klyd Watkins with his hypnotic voice.
The bulk of the songs are a mix of Watkins’s recitations
over Panasuk’s standard guitar accompaniment alternating
with Panasuk instrumentals.
Watkins words are often surreal with lots of repeated
echoing phrases coming in from every angle of the stereo. It’s
not always clear what he is saying, or its meaning,
but the convoluted message is mesmerizing and dramatic,
and his voice seems perfect for spellbinding the listener.
Note his Southern drawl that adds so much flavor.
Panasuk’s accompaniments are a standout. His guitar
work (and I’m a guitar player) is something I haven’t
heard before and can best describe as a mix of free
form guitar improvisations that mix folk with jazz or
bluegrass with jazz. The CD is set up so that the spoken
stories/songs alternate with the solo standard guitar work.
We have pure guitar in such songs as Herlene and Logjam Do It
On The Mountain and the middle song of each of the
two trilogy pieces. His guitar improvisations are worth
the price of the cd by themselves. But they sound even
better when it alternates with the storytelling.
Song 1 Listen The Night - a cool and bluesy full band song.
Song 2 (Origin trilogy) - my favorite on the album starts out
with a sort of mantra of “What You Gonna Wear?”, then
a guitar part “The Whole Size Of the Valley, then a story
about how a triangle of lovers turns into a constellation -
certainly a surreal gem - called Origin of the Constellation Called
Froggy’s New Year’s Eve.
Song 3 Herlene and Logjam Do it On The Mountain -
another guitar song.
Song 4 Smear, and Song 6 Blab Blab - two short silly surreal
nonsense songs.
Song 5 Birth is A Bitch - a rock band song instrumental
Song 7 (Big Love Trilogy) - which follows the form of the
other trilogy.
Song 8 Listen The Night (reprise) - jumbled version of the
opener and my least favorite song.
The two ‘trilogy’ works were flatout wonderful and
these dramatic spellbinding recitations mixed with these
spacy folk guitar improvisations in between; are startlingly
unpredictable, melodic and powerful.
Same for those cuts that feature guitar alone.
The two rock songs, #1 and #5 were solid but not as original.
And the others songs were not quite as good.
I wonder, if the meanings of the lyrics were more clear,
would that give the message more power? Perhaps, perhaps
not.
But as is this CD is a fine accomplishment with a great voice,
an incredible guitar, and a mix that spotlights both to their
best advantage.
Contact Info: Klyd Walkins website:
www.thetimegarden.com
Overall Grade: 5.9 out of 10.0
Editor's Choice mini Reviews: Seen the new currency?
Compare them with the old and you’ll see that the past
presidents have gotten facelifts and cosmetic surgery?
They are younger and more presentable. Yikes. What’s
wrong with them as they were? Why change history?
I thought that was only done in “The Ministry of Truth”
in the horror novel “1984” . Stop rewriting history !
Grade - lousy.
Grading system: 9-10 Highest grade - Life's work of
a master (ex. Collected plays of Shakespeare, collected
symphonies of Beethoven) 8-9 Single best work of a
celebrated master's career. 7-8. Best work of an era or
genre or decade. 6-7 Best work of the year. 5-6 Very
good. 4-5 More good than bad. 3-4 Average amount
of good = amount of bad. 2-3 Mostly bad with some
redeeming parts. 1-2 Nothing redeemable. 0-1 So bad
it is offensively bad and outrages the reviewere for
taking up that time in his life - just awful.
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Tom Hendricks tomhend...@cs.com
http://musea.digitalchainsaw.com
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