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Matt Elliott, "Drinking Songs"
By all accounts I should be loving this album. Matt Elliott has takenmusic much farther than I could have ever imagined from listening toThird Eye Foundation back in the 1990s. He's a fantastically talentedmulti-instrumentalist, composer, producer, and arranger, and Drinking Songsonce again progresses very slightly from its predecessor.Ici d'Ailleurs
The albumopens with the soft pluckings of guitar and blossoms with airy vocalsand delicate piano and other organic sounds put through his own brandof "creepatorium" filter. However, it seems as if he's spinning hiswheels when it comes to the actual evolution of each song. Anywherebetween 2.5 and 11 minutes pass for nearly every song on the album butI don't feel a sense of journey like I did with the songs on The Mess We Made.Although they're still emotional, tortured expressions—even a chorus ofElliott's voice on tracks like "The Kursk," where by the eighth minute,everything's looping backwards and forwards—the surrealistic editingjobs don't cover the fact that there isn't much going on in terms ofmusical progression within each song. By the end, Elliott almost givesa hint that these could be outtakes of The Mess We Made by including a 20+ minute reprise called "The Maid We Messed," something that could have simply been a bonus CD-R to accompany The Mess We Made.I look forward to new recordings from Matt and I still have the uttmostrespect for his talents, but I can't say I connect with Drinking Songs the way I connected with the stunning The Mess We Made and the beat-filled 10" single Borderline Schizophrenic released almost concurrently.
The albumopens with the soft pluckings of guitar and blossoms with airy vocalsand delicate piano and other organic sounds put through his own brandof "creepatorium" filter. However, it seems as if he's spinning hiswheels when it comes to the actual evolution of each song. Anywherebetween 2.5 and 11 minutes pass for nearly every song on the album butI don't feel a sense of journey like I did with the songs on The Mess We Made.Although they're still emotional, tortured expressions—even a chorus ofElliott's voice on tracks like "The Kursk," where by the eighth minute,everything's looping backwards and forwards—the surrealistic editingjobs don't cover the fact that there isn't much going on in terms ofmusical progression within each song. By the end, Elliott almost givesa hint that these could be outtakes of The Mess We Made by including a 20+ minute reprise called "The Maid We Messed," something that could have simply been a bonus CD-R to accompany The Mess We Made.I look forward to new recordings from Matt and I still have the uttmostrespect for his talents, but I can't say I connect with Drinking Songs the way I connected with the stunning The Mess We Made and the beat-filled 10" single Borderline Schizophrenic released almost concurrently.samples:
