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Artist: Griddle
Label: Independent
Length: 12tracks/53:46
Remember the first time you heard the Mothers of Invention? Not Frank Zappa. The Mothers. Reactions like what tha?, and this is so weird, right? But then you realized you had a smile plastered to your face and had started "Brown Shoes Don't Make It" over again. Welcome to the world of Griddle. Hailing from San Francisco and such bands as The Jazz Weasels and Colonel Knowledge and loving such authors like Thomas Pynchon, Konnegut and Cervantes may help get a sitting on this bunch.
Klimty Favela started as a lose batch of musical ideas that Kevin Seal, the band's singer and keyboard and now producer-cut together. What to do next? Relearn these new songs or work with the sound collages themselves and maybe dress up the fidelity a bit? The band choose the latter. A story was created and coalesced into a complete narrative.
After hearing snippets and rough mixes, artist Stephen Thompkins offered to create illustrations which ended in a comic book. What this is a soundtrack CD to a comic book.
Musically these guys are all over the place. It is hard to predict and very likeable and listenable.
One song that seems oddly perfect here is a cover of The Monkees "Porpoise Song." How could a Top 40 hit from the 60's fit? As a lovely tether to the real world, that's how. Majestic and beautiful, lush and watery, it is a fitting close to the album.
So what does the music sound like? Now that is not an easy question to answer, but....The Mothers, Julian Cope, Flaming Lips, The Ramones and Minutemen, power-pop, modern jazz and traditional prog-rock, Sci-fi B movie soundtracks, trance-rock, and sound effects records.
Not sure if that even gets
close to it, but Griddle's Klimty Favela makes a lovely racket.
Bob Felberg
9/30/2006
