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A good indicator of your response to this CD would be your reaction to the note hung from an asterisk in "Shameproof Flirt"'s lyric sheet: "We recognize and apologize for the lack of subject/pronoun agreement in this line." If you find this "apology" drolly humorous in pointing out an irrelevant error rather than merely correcting it, if you see in it the germ of an aesthetic that draws attention to and exploits such apparent shortcomings as songwriter-guitarist Franklin Bruno's rather limited vocal abilities, then Nothing Painted Blue is probably for you. If you think footnoting lyrics is the most ridiculous, pedantic, and pretentious thing you can imagine, and you're wondering what a word like "pedantic" is doing in a rock record review, well, you should probably steer clear. While Bruno ranks right up there with Scott Miller (the Loud Family), Stephin Merritt (Magnetic Fields, etc.), and the rather less obscure Elvis Costello when it comes to witty, verbose, and sometimes too-clever lyrics, it would be a mistake to sell the band's music short, as if the CD were just a cool shiny thing accompanying the lyric sheet. The credits list Bruno as playing "eighties guitar" and Michael Neelon on "seventies guitar" - and oddly enough, Bruno's guitar work does recall some of the eighties' more interesting approaches to rhythm guitar, from Buck-like arpeggiations to spiky post-punk crunch. And Neelon does bring in era-appropriate power-poppy guitar countermelodies, along with the occasional Mick Jones clarion lead guitar lines. The band as a whole updates the tense, quirky, yet song-friendly approach of cult faves The Embarrassment with a sly, postmodern wit: allusions to Tin Pan Alley chord progressions, even metal cliches, provide mummers'-mask background commentary to Bruno's wordplay. Less harsh sonically than 1994's Placeholders and more cleanly recorded than the somewhat skeletal production work on Power Trips Down Lovers' Lane (1993), The Monte Carlo Method may be Nothing Painted Blue's best, most cohesive work yet. |
