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Herb Diamante & Friends, "A Spoonful of Yeast"
This third album by Herb Diamante is a collection of the collaborations with a number of great and varied artists. From Sun City Girls to At Jennie Richie, Diamante and his pals cover a wide array of styles and moods. Sad, funny, and deeply weird, this album is as odd as can be without being strange for the sake of strangeness. There is real human tenderness under all schlock and mock horror which makes A Spoonful of Yeast one of those brilliant unhinged pop albums which never get made anymore.
Two of these songs have previously been made available as a download only single and another appeared on At Jennie Richie’s recent odds and ends compilation, In A Dream With Poe. Despite my initial misgivings about "Mr. Lonely," Diamante’s take on the song has grown on me greatly. I previously felt that Diamante’s vocals detracted from the Sun City Girls’ beautiful arrangement but I have since come to my senses and realized that Diamante has made the song his own. His Hammer Horror meets Scott Walker voice is ridiculous but it is also full of pathos.
This mix of humor and emotional force is replicated throughout A Spoonful of Yeast where songs about custard rub shoulders with phantasmagorical descriptions of unknown horrors. A camp, Halloween vibe runs through many of the songs; it is easy to imagine Diamante bathed in a green light surrounded by dry ice as he sings his lines. On "Riga" he sets up the scene of an evil creature stalking the night before breaking into a hilarious refrain of "This toilet reminds me of Riga." All through this, Sunburned Hand of the Man provide a shimmering, pastoral psychedelic backing.
As each song only features one constant (that being Diamante’s voice), it would be easy for A Spoonful of Yeast to sound like a bitty compilation. However, as each of the different groups play to Diamante’s tune it means the album sounds incredibly whole. Vibracathedral Orchestra’s droning, seductive music for "Yellow Vanilla Haze" works as well with Diamante’s voice as Diatric Puds’ fuzzy ‘50s rock’n roll vibes. Equally, Diamante alters his delivery to suit those of his collaborators which prevents A Spoonful of Yeast from going sour.
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