"so you found a pretty penny / are you happy now? / when the penny ditches you / at the edge of the casino / are you lucky now?"
So for the last 20 minutes or so my face as been scrunched up in perplexed face like when I was 16 and trying to wrap my head around trigonometry and simply not getting it. Now this ugly face is good, because it is a face of listening hard, a face of glee and kind of drunk at the same time. It is a face at the behest of "Blanchet House" by Portland's infinitely interesting singer songwriter, movie maker Richard Lederer. Now, NOW, I don't want to mislead you, as far as I know Richard is not a movie maker per say but, boy, "Blanchet House" and the other songs on his latest album "Asylum Star" create movies in my head. Midnight movies, mostly in black and white, kind of quirky with an underlying sadness and scenes turned sideways, an amalgam of Jim Jarmusch and Wes Anderson with a side of David Lynch.
I love the sound and the sometimes absurdist, acerbic, wonderfully aloof, sometimes dark, sometimes whimsical, sometimes surreal narratives (as I see them) that made me think of artists like MGMT, Flaming Lips, Ty Segall (sort of doing T-Rex), The Kinks, Cracker, Stardeath and White Dwarfs and Pavement. Now the subject of this review thing was supposed to be "Blanchet House" which moves in such beautiful ways. Richard's voice is so inviting and I swear to god I felt both the ghosts of Elliot Smith and Kurt Cobain in his vocal aesthetic and not in a weird way, in a beautiful way. The song also sort of feel on their head in a cross generational way with 90's art punk, jangle pop maybe at the forefront and, in fact, bands like the underated, understated Miracle Legion come to mind on this track as well.
"Blanchet House" cajoled me to peruse the "Asylum Star" album in total and while it was a cursory listen, there is so much to love and "Show My Girl" (with it's Pixies / Pavement rabbit holes) and "Crab King Will Never Die!" (with it's psychedelic carnival maze motif with 60's / 70's British rock adorned brilliance like a collision of David Bowie and Small Faces) are stunning immersive pieces of work worth the price of admission alone.
-Robb Donker Curtius
+ + +
THE FACTS AS WE KNOW THEM - PRESS NOTES:
https://open.spotify.com/track/1ChPVkNzbugMWOcyzsR8IT
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kZBHXUz2cdg
https://www.instagram.com/richardlederer/?hl=en
https://richardlederer.bandcamp.com/album/asylum-star
Portland kid making tunes.
https://open.spotify.com/track/1ChPVkNzbugMWOcyzsR8IT
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kZBHXUz2cdg
https://www.instagram.com/richardlederer/?hl=en
https://richardlederer.bandcamp.com/album/asylum-star
Portland kid making tunes.
We get by with a little help from our friends
Richard Lederer, singer-songwriter, indie rock, art punk, art rock, alt rock, divergent rock, avant rock, avant pop, Portland, Oregon, "Blanchet House", "Asylum Star" Album,
No comments:
Post a Comment