Remember the first time you heard Was (Not Was)? It was weird, right? Here was this band who could knock out awesome rhythm tracks – great beats, good guitars and a kind of worldly spice – and it had some totally oddball vocal track on top of it which was (probably) screaming out some unusual one-man vignette about calling your father to tell him you were prison bound and excited about it. Listening came with an awkward sensation; that killer musical composition made you want to dance, but the vocals made you feel weird about trying to dance because there was no hook and no discernible meter to it; it was a bit overwhelming, so you probably just stood, appreciating what you were hearing. You still liked the music – may have even liked the fact that it felt a little willfully awkward – but there was no way to dance to it, and no easy way to explain the group's appeal.
You know you remember how Was (Not Was) made you feel and know you liked it, don't you? Well, get ready to feel that kind of love again for Stick Against Stone Orchestra and their debut album, Get It All Out.
The truth of the matter is that Stick Against Stone Orchestra is actually more intrinsically likable than Was (Not Was) ever (ahem) was, and it's really easy to understand why; from the moment “Everybody's Song (The Music Business)” drives its way in, fronted by a spectacular team of world music maestros, the polyrhythmic drums and angular guitars (like Tom Verlaine angular – not Larry LaLonde angular) begin creeping into the very bone marrow of listeners and animating it – making them want to move in response. It's easy to move to it too; the polyrhythmic drums laid down by Tony Mason give up a carousing and infectious vibe while the horns supplied by Dan Lipsitz, Paula Herderson, Bob Wenzel and Miki Hirose emphasize both the beat and the changes, and then singer Geraldine Murray crests in on top of it all with some fantastic and sweet vocal melodies that really only turn vitriolic when you pay attention to the words (check out lines like “I remember when we used to talk/ Our words had so much promise…” and “Now it's just a business, now it's all group image/ Now it's all so normal, that we're in the music business.”).
“Everybody's Song” is a perfect and perfectly contemporary back-handed slam against the consumerist nature of both the music industry set to some of the tightest playing committed to tape in years. It's awesome but, as was the case with Was (Not Was) a couple of decades ago, you can't really dance to it; you can only appreciate it.
Stick Against Stone Orchestra keeps playing at the “sweet and beautiful songs with a Warfarin center” angle throughout the run-time of Get It All Out, and the flares of excitement that it yields never begins to feel played out because nothing is every done the same way twice. The microphone gets handed around to let everyone take a turn singing (including Cedric Lamar, David Terhune and Mark Rinzel) and give listeners the impression that there are no individual stars here, just a whole constellation together. That really offers both the band a lot of stylistic freedom with which to create too; while there are monolithic jazz strains lurking around every corner of songs like “Use Value,” “Elephants,” “Face Down” and “The Private Sector,” there are pieces of Afro-Cuban blues, reggae, strands of rock which border on the sort of punk hybrid that The Minutemen once made (see “Face Down” and “Moonlight Finds A Face”) and the unusual syncopated genius of Talking Heads spread throughout these twelve songs. Because there almost doesn't seem to be any rhyme or reason to which sound comes out when, listeners are left with the impression that this run-time is really all about fun and discovery – like, “What if we tried this? THAT would be a laugh! Oh yeah – you grab the mike for it! Ready? Let's go!” – and the lightness and loosemess of the form combined with the tight performances becomes fascinating. Listeners will genuinely find themselves wanting to know where Get It All Out will go next.
As Get It All Out's title track fades out and closes the album, it's not easy to qualify what exactly listeners just heard – but that just means they'll play it again to get it right and then again for the pure enjoyment of it; it's a complicated but mesmerizing affair. Get It All Out is a great start to what could be a very, very interesting career arc – but no, you can't dance to it.
Artist:
www.getitalloutmovie.com/
www.facebook.com/sasorchestra/
Download:
Stick Against Stone Orchestra – “Necessity's Tongue” – Get It All Out – [mp3]
Album:
Get It All Out will be released on January 22, 2013 by MediaGroove. Pre-order it here on Amazon .
