Herman Dune/Cerberus Shoal - The Whys and Hows of Herman Dune and Cerberus Shoal
(North East Indie)
Alvarius B/Cerberus Shoal - The Vim and Vigour of Alvarius B and Cerberus Shoal
(North East Indie)
This is the first in a projected series of split CD-EPs that Cerberus Shoal will share with some of their favorite contemporary artists, as well as some international bands they met on tour and who probably wouldn't otherwise be heard here in the United States. Herman Dune is a Swiss trio living in France who use tambourine, blocks, horns, shakers, violins, et al., to create a whimsically acoustic, homey, sing-around-the-campfire vibe that falls somewhere between Violent Femmes and '60s Dutch punsters, The Fool, while the two lengthy Cerberus tracks ("Sweetie" and "Bazouki") feature playful, driving, chanting harmonies, a la some hippie cult worshipping Hapshash & The Coloured Coat. Believe me, they're not that far removed from the Woodstock "Rain Chant!" If that's your thing, so is this.
The lads also sent Sun City Girl bassist Alan Bishop (aka Alvarius B) a copy of their 18-minute epic "Ding" and asked if he would be interested in offering his interpretation as part of the second entry in their new series. Bishop's version is a lengthy, surreal collection of non-sequitors delivered over a scraping, scratching, nails-on-blackboard, omnidirectional backing, and the whole 12-minute sonic orgy sounds very much like The Residents backing Eugene Chadbourne, with whom the Girls recorded an LP back in 1999. I'm unfamiliar with the Arizona trio's material, so I don't know if that's a good or bad thing, but fans can take it from there.
The EP also includes a couple of tracks from Bishop's 2x (solo) CD [also entitled Alvarius B.], "Blood Baby" and "Viking Christmas." The former is a short, wyrdfolk whine that recalls Jandek and Daniel Johnson channeled through Nathan (Rivulets) Amundson with a Randy Newman chaser, while the latter seems imbibed (I use the term advisedly) with enough glogg to keep even the thinnest skinned northerner warmer than a six-dog night.
Cerberus step in and repeat the program with mixed results. The Louisiana Loonies with the oversized Bette Davis eyes are back in full force on the Cerberus' take of "Blood Baby," which closely approximates the soundtrack to the latest edition of Barnum & Bailey's circus. The strangulated vocalist seemed to have been in the middle of a bowel movement when someone shoved a microphone in his face, and I'd swear that was Emo Phillips dropping by to help out on a few of the later verses! Strange, but now that the Tarpigh guys have jumped ship, this is one of the most Tarpigh-like tracks I've heard in the entire Cerberus Shoal catalogue!
Their version of "Viking Christmas" retains Bishop's couplets which recall the Bonzo's "Canyons of Your Mind," with lines like "In the brewery of your mind/Foam the suds from swollen glands, And the sauces in your limbs/Settled in between your hands," and they turn it into an appropriately high octane, drunken sea shanty. Even the broken dishes, clanking pottery, and clinking glasses remind me of a field recording of one of those Renaissance Dinner Theatre outings. The final straw-slurping gulp demonstrates our partygoers have thoroughly enjoyed their evening's entertainment.
Wrapping up the proceedings with the original "Ding," Colleen Kinsella sing/speaks over the sound of a manual typewriter, perhaps auto-writing the lengthy lyrics, which occasionally coincide with the liner notes. The Deconstructionist in me constantly wants to understand why something is included in a song, and that typewriter is bothering me. Does it suggest that the stream-of-conscious, extemporaneous "lyrics" are being sung almost as fast as someone can type them and pull them out of the typewriter? It is rather unsettling, bordering on distracting. About midway through the track, Erin Davidson begins harmonizing, and the entire piece eventually delivers the most awesome vocalization on any Shoal release. There's no way anyone could possibly follow the storyline of this piece, so one must be satisfied to sit back and enjoy one of the better examples of voice-as-instrument in recent memory.
Future entries will feature Amsterdam's De Kift, London's Guapo, Hungary's Kampec Delores, Poland's The Magic Carpathians, a reunion with their former partners, and Tarpigh.
|
