Cocktail
Angst
Our Big Top Parade
The
opening track to Our Big Top Parade (Cocktail Angst Consortium),
the second CD by New York band Cocktail Angst, so vividly captures
the kind of creepy psychedelic lounge of the '60s that the average
listener would never guess it's a new release. The remaining 12
tracks, mostly originals penned by pianist John Dryden and singer
Toby Williams, maintain the same authentic sound accompanied by
deliciously cooky lyrics. On "Pineapples," Williams
entones, When your husband does your laundry/ and your whites
all come back brown/ When you want to be alone/but your in-laws
are in town/Don't eat a pint of ice-cream/it will only give you
guilt/Just eat a big old pineapple/so you can stay wellbuilt.
Other
particularly delightful songs include "Samba de Angst,"
"Mindless," "Last Tango in Vegas," and "Bates
Motel." Most of the musicians probably weren't yet born when
the style of music they play first came into fashion, but they capture
the very essence of lounge as if they were possessed by Mancini.
Even if you have no taste for musical innovation and can't appreciate
the perky mambos, sambas and exotica on this CD, you will flip for
the lyrics. If not, you're too humorless to be reading ATOMIC.
-Leslie
Rosenberg
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