Like customers at those old-timey photograph booths that are de rigeur at any high-class American tourist destination, the music Brian Carpenter's Beat Circus is dressed up in the costumery of a former age but that it is, in fact, a contemporary creation isn't obscured. Like a modern earring or necklace left to stand out adjacent to a feather boa, the composition and execution of Dreamland, the project's debut, contain certain marks of modernity. The antique flavor of the music is more a theatrical affectation than a tool of accurate reenactment, though Carpenter's concentration on art over authenticity isn't any sort of damning fault, simply a manner of reconciling the styles of the past with the sound of of today.
Conceptually inspired by a Coney Island amusement park that burned to the ground the night before it opened its 1911 summer season, Dreamland mixes fact and fiction to weave its dark tales, engaging in ghostly surrealism, but also touching on the grittier side of New York life during the early years of the twentieth century. Musically, the album treads through lighter locales than its lyrical content; the band's Balkan brass, backwoods plunk and clatter, and uneasy circus swoon contain some dark tinges, but they're more in line with the colorful life of the actual Dreamland than its charred and empty remains in that summer of 1911. But, despite its disparate influences and wide array of instrumentation (banjo, pump organ, tuba, and washboard are all featured on the disc), Dreamland isn't quite the eccentric oddity one might expect. The influence of Balkan music and gypsy whirl are played fairly straight; these oft-aped styles are executed with aplomb. The stories in song, though, are the backbone of Dreamland, and Carpenter's more narrative compositions are heavier on Americana than any Eastern European influence. But more conspicuous than the actual music are Carpenter's vocals, a theatrical pastiche of cartoonish vaudeville and Gothic villainy. His dramatic delivery tends to dominate any track on which it appears, with the dark tales of death and debauchery taking precedence in the mix over their instrumental accompaniment. This is often disappointing, as Carpenter's stagy vocals are often the least compelling facet of Beat Circus' songs. It's no surprise that some of the instrumental tracks on the album are its best, though this isn't to say that Carpenter's voice is anathema on Dreamland. Still on a disc so focused on these period narratives, that there's any reservation regarding their regalement is unfortunate.
