Portland Cello Project

It’s a cover album. Sorta kinda.

It’s an obvious aspect to start a review with, but the fact is, I didn’t know this when I popped it in the CD drive during the morning commute. It can certainly be said that it was not anything that I expected; which, unimaginatively enough, was All Cellos All the Time.

I suppose you could call this a concept album, that of a cello collective pulling aside individual artists and re-interpreting their work. This ‘concept’ has the bonus of being an excellent sampler for those with cultivated ADD- and by cultivated, I mean not bestowed upon us by genetics, but by countless hours of MTV. It also, much to my chagrin, makes it difficult to comment on the album as a whole, because its elements are so disparate. So, in the spirit of short sharp directional shifts, I’m sticking with my ADD; we’ll do this track by track. That is until I spy something more interesting out of the window or on my sock, or just open up the fridge and forget what I was doing.

As a quick aside, does anyone else’s iTunes import their tunes in an apparently random order, and then play them back in an equally arbitrary sequence? For this reason I will be equally arbitrary. Hell, I’m lying… I’ll put them in any order I see fit. It’s the small control over my life that gives me semblance of stability, anyway. Why not exercise it?

Heather Woods Broderick: “For Misty”

I like to eat my dessert first, and so let us start with the track that I find myself most enamored with. It ain’t a rocker, folks, there is no verse/chorus/verse or catchy pop hooks; it is merely a very delicately rendered, heart-wrenchingly bittersweet composition, a slow ascent. I’m put in mind of grieving – not the acute wails and pain of something far too present, an unexpected death of someone close – but maybe a year or so later, when you find yourself needing to clean the gutters, something that He always did, the absence and empty space speaking volumes. The song is put together on similar lines, the underscoring of empty space and haunting pedal tones making the sparseness that much more powerful. This is the tune I will learn on my own axe, and play when I feel overwhelmed, when I’m just floating piece of detritus, unable to alter the currents of causality.

Britney Spears: “Toxic”

At least I think it’s Britney. I had to look it up on iTunes, and that’s what they tell me. This was my first clue that this was a cover album. It is nifty and novel and funny, but something I’ll clearly skip over after hearing it twice. Still, though, it does my ADD good to shift gears so abruptly.

3 Leg Torso: “Divertissments for Performing Bears”

This is the one band I recognize, although I couldn’t tell you from where or why. I suspect from my own involvement in the pseudo-retranslated-world music scene. It’s quirky, well done, a perfect window into the urban white musician’s foray into ethnic music. I don’t mean this to sound overly ethnocentric – and by ethnocentric, I mean the tendency of people of any genetic lineage other than Caucasian to be overly and sometimes obnoxiously exclusive about their cultural mores (I’ve been guilty of this in the past). I’m just highlighting the fact that these cultural ‘memes’ if you will are changed when raised on different soil, often for the better. So it is with 3 Leg Torso.

Hurtbird: “Livin On The Side of The Why”

Hip-hop with cellos. Even though this has never been done before, it’s been done before. Enough said.

Nick Jaina: “Power”

I don’t know if Nick will be pissed or not, but he sounds – granted, because of the string section- redolent, nay, evocative of Andrew Bird. This is clearly not an insult, but I have to wonder if that’s what he meant to do; it seems accidental. Still though, the tune is a compelling listen, the cellos sounding like genius crickets in their organic metronome regularity and alacrity for counter-point harmony. Wonderfully quirky, in both composition and lyrical content.

Weinland: “Gold”

‘Evocative’ of an artist or a genre is one thing. A blatant rip-off of Neil Young is quite another.

Gideon Freudmann: “Robin Hood Changes His Oil”

Why? I don’t quite get it. Jaunty little piece, and I suppose it can sort of call up images of a frustrated forest-green spandex clad gentleman with grease-caked fingernails and Pennzoil fingerprints on his bow, but I still don’t get the joke entirely.

Musee Mecanique

An even, smooth, singer/songwriter piece. No frills whatsoever- just a little peek into a melancholy moment, underscored so well by the cello faction. This album is growing on me by the track, and the grounding action of the cello players is now lending a common thread.

Anna Fritz: “Stay”

I’m more enamored of the playful pizzicato plucking than anything else. I don’t mean to short-shift Anna, perhaps she deserves fairer shake, but it’s late, and I like what I like. I’m beginning to be more interested in my socks. Is that a little hitchhiking blackberry seed?

There is clearly more here and I’m pressed with the responsibility with coming up with some sort of button phrase, a sound bite that could best express my feelings as a whole about the album. While I can’t technically give it a resounding thumbs-up, given select tracks, it still is worthy of a listen, and even a purchase, if only for the reason that if you don’t, you’ll never hear the brilliant rendition of cello-come-heavy metal version of the Super Mario Bros. theme so snugly hidden at the end of the Loch Lomond track. As with any collaborative effort, there is decent stuff, mediocre stuff, and some brilliant shining gems. The latter are worth it- pick it up, people, it’s a good ride.

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