{"id":1550,"date":"2017-02-07T20:28:04","date_gmt":"2017-02-08T01:28:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/nickzaino.com\/departmentoftangents\/?p=1550"},"modified":"2017-02-07T20:28:04","modified_gmt":"2017-02-08T01:28:04","slug":"new-release-roundup-mega-bog-frederick-the-younger-rose-cousins-and-duke-garwood","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nickzaino.com\/departmentoftangents\/2017\/02\/07\/new-release-roundup-mega-bog-frederick-the-younger-rose-cousins-and-duke-garwood\/","title":{"rendered":"New Release Roundup: Mega Bog, Frederick the Younger, Rose Cousins, and Duke Garwood"},"content":{"rendered":"

MUSIC<\/strong><\/p>\n

1. Mega Bog<\/a> \u2013 Happy Together<\/em>
\nThe third or fourth time I listened through Happy Together<\/em>, Mega Bog\u2019s first full-length album since 2011\u2019s Freaky Dawn, I began to envision it as the soundtrack to an ambitious avant garde stage musical. The first strains of \u201cBlack Rose\u201d are disorienting, like tuning a radio. Then singer\/guitarist Erin Birgy sets the scene in a voice altogether too cheery for the music it\u2019s set against. \u201cHear the writer waver, too,\u201d she sings. \u201cWalk down the stairs towards her office.\u201d Then the lyrics get tricky, like a nod to Sondheim\u2019s \u201cGetting Married Today\u201d from Company, while Birgy\u2019s speak-singing diction remains crisp and flawless. \u201cRe-realizing a notion I thought had expired\/That requires a kind heart.\u201d And then she hands on the note, singing, \u201cSo far.\u201d It feels like a dissolve from the image of a woman in a dark office to where the real story starts. Where it\u2019s going, it\u2019s hard to decipher, but the lyrics and the strange music are evocative. In a starlit room, we are introduced to \u201cthe spider\u2019s old girlfriend,\u201d who is \u201cthe spirit we all relate.\u201d <\/p>\n

It keeps morphing from there. \u201cBlackout\u201d is more familiar territory, lush guitar pop, but keeps taking the vocal melody to unusual places. It all fractures again on \u201cDiznee,\u201d noir-ish in the breathy sax-led introduction, and then futuristic and hip-shaking. And disturbing. \u201cThere\u2019s a man with a gun in his hand,\u201d she sings, her voice floating and dropping, \u201cSays he hates my laugh\/\/And he wants me gone.\u201d \u201cFwee\u201d is a groovy\u2026 anti-torch song? \u201cHow could I have known\/There\u2019s a person out there who means me no harm,\u201d she asks. She\u2019s back in Laurie Anderson mode on \u201cLondon,\u201d all synths and sax. However experimental the music gets, it\u2019s always tuneful, often in a very classically pop sense. Burt Bacharach could have had a smash hit molding \u201cWorst Way\u201d for Dionne Warwick to sing in 1964. That\u2019s another one I can see in the stage musical, Birgy lazily walking down a garden path in her Sunday best, singing to herself while the scene she\u2019s describing \u2013 \u201cAnd sugar\/I never meant to leave you\/Hang\/I could have swore I pulled you out of the oven\/I could\u2019a swore I did my best\u201d \u2013 plays out in contrast stage right. This is remarkable stuff. Odd. Imaginative. And toe-tapping, too. <\/p>\n