THE MISTAKES

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If you enjoy early Mike Keneally albums like hat., Sluggo! or Boil That Dust Speck, you'll probably love this album. It is not a pure MK album though, Henry Kaiser adds tons of interesting ideas. Some of the stuff is pretty inaccessible for people not used to Jazz improvisation or atonal Avant-Prog though.

About half of the album tracks are short bits of less than one minute ... I'll just comment on the longer tracks. But these bits are not just interludes ... sometimes they contain motifs which are explored in the longer tracks, sometimes they are funny outtake-like clips.

Put The Bass In The Middle Of My Head: This is a cool improvised track without vocals which dwells on a basic rhythm while bass and the two guitars just go crazy.

Aye-Aye Monster: A pretty normal song ... quite harmonic, with interesting vocal arrangements. It flows nicely and the vibe is reminiscent of bands like Blues Traveller. But during 2 minutes in the middle of this 6 minute song they go freestyle and play around with the song structures in a very "Avant" way.

Island of Lost Luggage: One of my favorite songs on the album, pretty much everything is improvised, based on a single key melody.

Career Politicians: A really weird song. Mike Keneally has a way of creating really odd harmonic "situations" ... there are only so many chords and only 12 different notes, and you would think that most chords have been done many times before, but somehow Keneally manages to create really unique sounding structures.

Transmogrification of Chili (ennui): This song is pretty normal, a rock song with funky guitars, although Keneally's vocals are nearly as weird as in the preceding song.

Warm Papaya: This songs basically consists of pretty cool guitar improvisations which are reminiscent of King Crimson. Drums and Bass are very reduced, one of the few calm and mellow songs on the album.

Waiting on Williams: This is really funny to listen to. Keneally plays some country-rock riffs and varies and twists them a little bit, and the band joins in. The song builds up steadily for about 3 minutes, then MK plays a nice Zappa-esque solo, followed by a solo by Kaiser which is easily on par. After that they play together for a while in a bluesy call-response scheme.

Assembly Language: Another weird song like Career Politicians, very much Keneally. It features a really crazy MK solo.

Sirenita The Greek: This is a short track with many amazing moments ... one of the highlights of the album for me. All the instruments and the vocals just go crazy.

Baby Blues: how cute ... the song begins with some baby voice samples which "sing" blues vocals and are doubled by MK's wah-wah guitar. Then the band joins in, playing a really mellow slow blues. Kaiser plays a blues solo, the baby vocals go on and MK plays variations of them.

The Mistakes vs. Dropped: The longest song on the album - 9 1/2 minutes of improvisation. The song pretty much summarizes the album.

The Mistakes? I think it wasn't a mistake. It's just too bad that these guys only got together to make one album.

Mostly, this album sounds like a Mike Keneally driven project. Most of the songs sound more like work from his albums than any of the other band members. They are inventive, guitar driven experimental rock, with Keneally, flair for humor. The next most obvious feature is Henry Kaiser's bizarre, but beautiful guitar work. He also seems to push Keneally's always great playing to it's boundaries.

The best comparison I can make is to Captain Beefheart's later, jazzier angular work. It's not exactly the same, but there are many similarities in the compositional style.

While all the songs are great, the standout tracks to me are Career Politicians, where Keneally seems to be comparing our entrenched electees to pirates, Waiting On Williams, an improvement by this group on the already great version included in The Tar Tapes, Vol. 1, and Baby Blues, and eerie piece based around a loop of Keneally's baby, Jesse. For an excellent example of that style, look for Scott Johnson's John Somebody album, it will blow your mind.

My only complaint is that while Andy West's playing is good on this album, he just doesn't break loose like he would at Dixie Dregs concerts, or occasionally on their albums (listen to Odyssey for an example.