Search - Ld & the New Criticism :: Tragic Realism

"Spread your brains like Jell-O"

John Warren | Maplewood, New Jersey United States | 12/02/2005

(5 out of 5 stars)

"How can songs about murder and heartbreak be so much fun-and so funny?



L.D. Beghtol (Flare, moth wranglers) has yet another band to express his creativity. This time he channels the "old, weird America" Griel Marcus wrote about. But instead of a pale revivalist copy of traditional American music, L.D. and friends throw in ukulele, accordion, Stroh violin (a horn sticks out of it), mandolin and bassoon into a blender and pour out what they call "experimental countrypolitan deathpop." I call it campfire music for a generation hooked on meds.



Or just call it brilliant. Consider this lyric: "But I just might laugh/If a train cut you in half/And smashed your cello/And spread your brains like Jell-O." (From "Elegy for an Ex-") Several lines made me laugh out loud.



Songs like "Always the Last to Know," "When We Dance (At Joe Orton's Wedding)" and "Unpaid Endorsement" will have you singing along to desertion, murder and popping Zoloft, respectively. Even the titles alone are terrific: "Burn, Burn, Burn in Hell," "D.I.Y. and Save Big," "I've Got One Foot in the Grave and the Other on the Dance Floor."



But L.D. and gang know that trade tragic songs of life don't have to be about giddy Gothic gore. "Definitive V2" mourns a love that remained unrequited, while "Too Old to Die Young" has Shirley Sims take the lead on an old-fashioned lament about hitting life's midpoint.



Best of all, the songs' considerable humor never gets condescending toward older forms of American music that L.D. clearly loves. You don't need a "Zoloft smile" to enjoy this CD, because L.D. and company are laughing-not smirking-along with you.

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