PUNCH

Charming Hostess third album is a great example of the "melodic" side of RIO showing in the 13 songs of this release very jazzy and proggy rhythmic sections but never losing the avant garde sense of music.

Beside the powerful rhythmical work full of jazzy, prog and tribal sections, Charming Hostess has a powerful talented duo of female singers which gives to the music a particular taste, even when the band plays songs like "Long Black Veil", an awsome track which works like a perfect country-rock-avant garde ballad...

The strong and complex work on guitars, bass, basoon and cello is the element which complete the characteristics that turns the music of Charming Hostess into an interesting and necessary album to any RIO fan.

Some highlights: "Aysh Ye Kdish", a jew/Eastern Euorpe folk song with a strong rhythmical base; "Torso", a powerful song full of surprising twists which reminds some Miriodor late works; "Street Of Tubing", the harder song of the album but also dark and thrilling; "Rise" maybe the songs that's closer to the "traditional" RIO from the 80's; "Lady Gay" the proggiest song of the album even when some twists that reminds early Gong works and suprising almost epical sections...

An underrated album that any prog music fan should have to listen, specially RIO lovers... 3.5+...

Third Charming Hostess' album is a bit different from previous two. With bigger accent on Jewish traditional music - from klezmer to Middle Eastern - it contains some pure acoustic songs, some world fusion and some quite energetic compositions,melting post-punk and klezmer in one straightforward brew.

Band's debut was so excellent by its quirky music - same or similar components (there were much more folklore elements - from Eastern European to Latino-Spanish) were precisely combined to acoustic jewelery. On this album band openly simplifies musical structure, often to klezmer-punk or world fusion. Team of musician are almost the same, so musicianship level is hardly lower, I believe it's just a different concept.

With all my love to Jewlia Eisenberg's musical projects, I must to mention this album still being quite interesting one made a serious trend to easier accessible music, and it's hardly for good.

Obviously less successful of all three first band's release, it's still contains some interesting moments. But I would recommend Jewlia Eisenberg's solo album Trislectic (2001) even better that Punch is.