This is an album of highly poetic reflections on life in and around a Williamsburg rock and roll band. Portraits of the floppy-haired, black-and-white-striped, skinny-jeaned Brooklyn neighborhood (my prejudices, not Tris') are sung, spoken, and shout [+]This is an album of highly poetic reflections on life in and around a Williamsburg rock and roll band. Portraits of the floppy-haired, black-and-white-striped, skinny-jeaned Brooklyn neighborhood (my prejudices, not Tris') are sung, spoken, and shouted over funky bass lines and glorious electric harpsichord. Yes, electric harpsichord. But, before we get to that, let's focus on the lyrics. Tris McCall is a street photographer, a beat poet, a journalist, an *anthropologist*.... The album was recorded live, in sequence, and it sounds like it. Which is to say: with the occasional missed beat and bad note, it's full of heat and urgency, a special moment captured. The band is on fire. And certainly tight enough; drums and bass lock in place when needed, and female backing vox surround Tris with oohs and ahhs, while supporting his most delicate sentiments, ready to catch his falling voice.... Pound your fist and bang your head to the powerful "An Ass of U and Me" and get down with "Not Another Song About You," an infectious and weirdly awesome marriage of Devo and Springsteen, an examination and redefinition of rock and roll. -- Stephen Mejias, *Stereophile.com*
I like Tris McCall. I’d be at his CD release party tonight at Maxwell’s if I didn’t have to watch my kid. As I type this, the audience is watching a CPA-ish guy lead a crack band thru carefully orchestrated arrangements of songs about what it’s like to love New Jersey, but to try to play rock ‘n’ roll (and keep the aforementioned crack band
together) in ultra-hipster Williamsburg, Brooklyn. The fact that this is a damn near impossible task to accomplish has inspired his new collection of tunes: *I’m Assuming You’re All In Bands*... which, of course, we all ain’t, but you’ll get all the funpaininsaneangstweirdnesssheeridiotjoy vicariously via this disk.... Tris writes literate, tuneful (sometimes even show-tuneful) stuff, and sprays out his sardonic lyrics stream-of-unself-consciously. These are keyboard-based songs, fingered out mainly on an electric harpsichord (one of those vintage plexiglass Baldwins, I wonder?), and spiked with ‘found sound’ audio samples that add some real vicious commentary to Tris’s bitter-but-still-polite observations. It’s an interesting choice of instruments – as un-rock as i
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