Encomium for Jay Farrar

The older I get, the harder it is to surprise me. The windswept waves of CNN deliver man's inhumanity towards man everyday in nice, discreet 30-second bundles. Hearing news of the exploits of genocidal maniacs has become old hat. Still, there are things that surprise me and Jay Farrar's music is one of them.

During my last stint of dogsitting, I threw in his Terroir Blues and became entranced with "Out on the Road". Sparse acoustic guitar and flute create a fragile hand that cradles his ragged voice intoning loneliness and weary despair. He sings "You're gonna to find pain" and the flute flutters past your ears like a butterfly as it offers just a hint of a palliative.

It's something he does so incredibly well. Several of his songs are studies in melancholy but they all have hints of hope. "Tear-Stained Eye" is one of my favorite songs of all time. There's just something about how he sings "Sainte Genevieve can hold back the water/But saints don't bother with a tear stained eye" that sends a shiver down my spine. I get a certain sense of knowing exactly what he means, of knowing exactly how he feels without really knowing him at all. A town may be able to keep itself from being flooded by the Mississippi, but lonely people's hearts are always flooded by the River of Constant Change. Still, he offers hope:

If learning is living, and the truth is a state of mind
You'll find it's better at the end of the line

And that's what I keep wondering. When is the end of this line gonna come? When will it get better?

We Know You Know

For those of you not herpetologically inclined, an introduction: Reptile Palace Orchestra hail from Madison, Wisconsin and have been infecting listeners with Balkan lounge funk for roughly a decade. The Reptiles return after a four-year recording absence to follow up 1999's Iguana Iguana with We Know You Know, their third album for Omnium. It continues their tradition of blending Balkan folk music, rock, humor, weirdness, and whatever else comes to their minds.

A good example of this tradition is "Apo Laouto". The melody hails from Crete but the performance is all RPO. Layers of sound are piled on top of a plaintive rhythm. Some sitar guitar courtesy of Biff Blumfumgagnge dances around Timm Gould's clarinet as well as cello. As the songs slowly meanders along, we get a dash of flute and even didgeridoo making for a hypnotizing song.

The album begins, however, with Anna Purnell's sultry voice cuing Robert Schoville's manic drumming on the opening "Kochari". Although Assyrian in origin, there's plenty of sax and droning guitar to go along with the butt-shaking rhythm. The Reptiles can also make you dance using more conventional means. A cover of the Ides of March's "Vehicle" really moves with Purnell belting out the lyrics while new member Ed Feeny justifies the addition of a bassist to the band.

The rest of the album is equally varied. Purnell and cellist Seth Blair wrote the vaguely country-inflected "What Do You See?". Imagine Ozric Tentacles doing "Far Away Eyes" by the Rolling Stones and you have an idea of what it sounds like. Blair's cello takes over for steel guitar while a cosmic fiddle solo is thrown in for good measure. "Bert's Mandotation" is a beautiful, shimmering bit of mandolin written by Blumfumgagnge in tribute to his dying father while "Uranus Sirtez" finds the band in klezmer territory.

On Iguana Iguana the band covered Brian Eno's "Sombre Reptiles" so it is not too surprising that they've included a few minimalist tidbits of their own on We Know You Know. Interspersed among the songs are bite-sized bits of weirdness. Samples of former drummer Siggi Baldursson pounding on the skins are looped while guitarist Bill Feeny and Blumfumgagnge add swirls of feedback and violin. "Earth Lee Julie", a tribute to the actresses who played Catwoman on the old Batman TV series, has a bit of humor with some samples from the show.

"Tune for Ibn Khaldun Part 2" closes the album in Arabic fashion though it begins in a humorous one. A toy cash register begins chiming in parody of Pink Floyd's "Money" before the didgeridoo returns and then percussion. As the song progresses, everything but the kitchen sink is thrown in including pennywhistle and some Archie Shepp-like sax bursts. With its melange of instruments and rhythms, the song resembles a rave at a Middle Eastern abattoir.

As a bonus, there are 14 mp3s on the CD. "Devil Went Down to Georgia" is transplanted to Plovdiv and there a couple selections from the band's previous Omnium recordings. The bulk of the material, however, is live which is the best way to hear the band. You too can dance as Purnell slithers onstage playing trumpet in a gypsy cocek and Biff culls unearthly noises from his homemade therolin donning a fez all the while.