Album Review - Terry Scott Taylor - This Beautiful Mystery

How many times am I going to write about Tim Chandler?  Apparently at least once more!

Recently Tom Willet created and posted a video about Tim as part of a series of outstanding deceased Christian musicians that are horribly underappreciated, musicians that should have had an impact on the world at large but didn’t even make a huge splash in the CCM community.  The first two highlighted musicians were Mark Heard and Tom Howard, if that gives any indication.  While the video was good, it was the comments from his fellow musicians, people that lived and played with Tim, that really stirred my soul.

And this leads me to the reason for this article: the new Terry Scott Taylor album (or double album) This Beautiful Mystery.  I’ve been hesitant to vomit my thoughts out into the digital world because I’m not 1000% enamored with the new album, but that’s one of the things Tim liked about me, that I would tell him my thoughts on his music without a fanboy sugar coating.  If it’s amazing I’ll say so in the album reviews I used to write.  If a band turns in a stinker I’ll just not write a review.  This is why I’ve been hesitant to write this quasi-review, because everyone else online has been gushing about how glorious this album is, and I’m left scratching my head wondering if we’re listening to the same set of songs.

When I first heard This Beautiful Mystery I was struck with how few rockers there were, how the overall tone of the album teeters on maudlin.  Then I caught myself thinking “Tim would have probably done such and such on this track” or “Whoever is playing bass on this one isn’t really adding anything.”  Then I realized that such thinking is unfair.  Tim isn’t playing and whoever is shouldn’t try to be Tim.  It would be like an American trying to do a British accent.  They could get close but eventually they’d say “apartment” instead of “flat” or some such and the whole farce would fall down. 

Terry has said that Tim “gave me courage to venture beyond my supposed creative limitations and in so doing, lose my self-conscious restraints and give into a kind of wild abandonment.”  That is the missing element on This Beautiful Mystery.  If Tim had been alive he would have most certainly contributed on most, if not every, track on the new Taylor album and likely would have helped shape the songs, pushing Terry to swing for the fences.  As they stand almost all of them play it safe and despite Rob Watson gussying them up with his keyboard orchestrations (that unfortunately often sound a bit dated sonically) the songs fail to excite my aural neurons.

I listened to both discs a number of times and felt underwhelmed. I’m no enemy of slow songs but there were just too many of them.  Eventually I remembered that, like turning DOWN the bass will actually boost the guitar, often times removing a weak song from an album will increase the overall listening experience.  What if I removed the weaker songs and created my own “This Beautiful Mystery” of only those songs that appealed to me?  I printed off a list of the song titles and listened again, rating each song on a 1 to 10 scale.  Then, being the dork that I am, I listened to a few tracks at random and rated them again, not looking at my original score.  Seeing that the ratings matched I decided that it wasn’t necessary to endure the entire double album again.

Out of 21 tracks there were just eight that I rated a 5 or above.  I listened to these by themselves and found that instead of a ho-hum slogging through I have excitement now when listening to the album.    It’s just about on the level of “John Wayne” and “Knowledge and Innocence.”  If a strong handed producer had been brought in I’m sure some of the “cut” thirteen tracks could have been tightened up to make a full album.  I’m sorry if this sounds harsh (especially to Terry should he ever find himself reading this) but I have to call it like I hear it.  This Beautiful Mystery is a great album hidden inside a mediocre one.

In case you were wondering, the eight songs on “my” version are:

Signs and Wonders (this one has the most Tim-like bass part)

The Meek

The Everlasting Man

The High Tech Tribulation Force

The Very One I Love

A Great Good Is Coming

Worried Waters

Under The Mercy

 

 

 

Review - Terry Scott Taylor - Return To The Neverhood

In the beginning Doug Tennapel, creator of Earthworm Jim, also created The Neverhood by utilizing hundreds of pounds of clay. And Doug said unto Terry Taylor, “Make me music that sounds like clay.” And Terry did. And it was very good. So good, in fact, that it won awards and cavalcades and a round of congratulatory back slaps so robust that Terry sought the anointing of St. Benjamin Gay.

Many years later, for reasons unknown to us mere mortals, after twenty years Doug and Terry decided to Return To The Neverhood, although substituting a more cost-effective comic book over a claymation-based video game. As I dearly loved to squishy, malleable, goofy, inarticulate music of the original I dutifully shelled out some cash but braced myself for the worst because we all know that sequels almost always stink like a three day old diaper. I’m happy to say that despite a reference to “pooping my pants” in the Spanish flavored song “The Love Sweet Love Suite” there is nothing stinky about Return To The Neverhood. You gots yer standard Dixieland combo on psychotropic drugs, a smattering of ethereal Star Trek vocals, a few jazzy combos with scorching trumpets, general goofing around and oodles of sticky melodies. In essence you’ve got everything that made the original so endearing. A favorite track is “Huh?” which is a peppy surf-like ditty punctuated by sax and clarinets that every now and then breaks into a spacey gush of noise that causes the mush-mouthed vocals to exclaim, “What’s going on here?” and “I don’t get it.” Seriously, I want this played at my funeral. Another zinger is “It’s a Ding Dang Day,” a lo-fi bluegrass romp that packs four minutes of fun into one minute. “Fishin’ With The Sculptor” perfectly captures the essence of the original Neverhood theme without directly quoting it, throwing in a drunken horn section that proudly makes a number of musical and amusical sounds not appropriate for mixed company.

Listen to this avant-garde folk album at your own peril: you may find yourself singing the nearly-legible lyrics at work, home, or play, thus bringing the curious looks of onlookers looking your way. You’ll have a “ding dong dickey dang day” and it will be very good.

Review - The Straw Theory

Another one that doesn't get any spin these days. It was just "okay."

When you center any band around a piano, comparisons to Ben Folds Five are inevitable. Fearing a mere rip-off band, I started the self-titled CD by The Straw Theory spinning and sat back without much expectation. And so it was that the first song tore past my ears with a runaway train tempo and blazing guitars. The piano was at the center of the song but more like a skeletal structure upon which the copious guitars would hang than an ebony and ivory skin that makes itself the auditory focus. Ben who? The album continued with song after song of solidly written songs of innocence and youth with poetic, thought provoking lyrics backed by catchy, intricately arranged melodies. "Joker's Wilde", with its excellent juxtaposition of a breezy, laid-back verse with an aggressive, angular chorus is the perfect foil to the dreamy "Man On The Moon", a song singer/songwriter Tyler Houston shares with Leigh Nash of Sixpence None the Richer and her ethereal vocals. Which is a good thing because the only weakness of this album is Houston's vocals. He handles the faster songs well but he tends to drone on in some of the slow songs, causing me great annoyance and ultimately, a quick punch of the fast-forward button. "Falling Forward" finds the band at their peak with a solid upbeat alternative radio song. Here the bass player plays sustained notes other than the chord root, creating some nice tensions in the verse that resolve in the chorus. And I would be amiss if I did not mention that "In The Future" may cause your speakers to blister and melt. All in all, an excellent first album that I would recommend to those who like their alternative rock fresh and innovative, but still rock.

This review first appeared in WhatzUp, February 2000.

Review - The Lost Dogs - Gift Horse

Oh, how I miss new music from Gene Eugene...

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Take four alternative music pioneers (Terry Taylor of Daniel Amos, Derri Daugherty of The Choir, Gene Eugene of Adam Again, and Mike Roe of 77s), throw them into a studio for a few weeks, shake gently, and out comes... a country album? Originally a side project, the Lost Dogs have released their fourth studio album, Gift Horse. While the intent of these albums has always been to hearken back to their musical roots, never has a Lost Dogs album been so country and western. Previous releases included 50s rock, bluegrass, alternative ballads, and even a novelty song but this album is unabashedly grounded in country. As always, the songs tell tales, such as "A Vegas Story" about a gambling addict selling his life for "free drinks and a dream" while "Rebecca Go Home" is a touching, sad song about innocence lost. "Diamonds to Coal" is a straight-ahead rocker while "If You Loved Here..." is an all-out hick hootenanny! "Loved and Forgiven" breaks from the general feel slightly with more of a Beach Boys/ 77's vibe in the chorus but overall, the album is much more cohesive in content and feel than previous albums.

Which is the main problem with this album. Yes, the songwriting is solid and yes, the vocal harmonies are amazing but while in past albums each "dog" brought a number of songs to the table, on this album Taylor wrote all the songs. All of them good songs, mind you, but it is the unique chemistry between these four fantastic artists that has been the real draw of Lost Dogs. Plus it's about the only time you get to hear one or two new songs from Gene Eugene, one of the best songwriters alive, since Adam Again has been on hiatus for the last half-decade... and this time there were no songs by Eugene. So yes, the songs are excellent, winning over even such an anti-country music people as myself and my brothers, but Lost Dogs raised the bar so high on previously albums that Gift Horse is more like a well groomed show pony than the Kentucky Derby winner fans have come to expect.

This review first appeared in WhatzUp, March 2000.

Review - Starflyer 59 - Leave Here A Stranger

I really like this album but it depresses me and needs to be listened to in one gulp so it doesn't get much time these days.

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Some albums are great albums, full of wonderful songs. Some albums reek to high heavens. A very select few albums are works of art. Although it may sound pretentious, Leave Here A Stranger by Starflyer59 is definitely in the latter category. From the very first spin, something about the flow, the cohesiveness of the songs and how they interact with each other makes you realize that SF59 had high aspirations for this album and that they hit their mark perfectly. While listening to this disc I am reminded at times of the landmark OK Computer, early The Cure, and Pet Sounds, lofty sources of inspiration indeed. In a conscious effort to strip down their sound, SF59 recorded the album in glorious mono, forcing themselves to distill their vision into a potent concentrate. Much like Pet Sounds, there is an amazing breadth of instrumentation including harps, saxophones, strings, timpani and more. The fact that such lush orchestrations do not cloud the songs is a tribute to all involved. As with past SF59 efforts, there is a great bit of creative use of noise and heavily reverbed guitar alongside Jason Martin's trademark wispy vocals not unlike those of Radiohead's Thom York. The songs are low-key and atmospheric yet filled with haunting melodies and arrangements. For lyrical inspiration, the band looked to their immediate world. The opening track, "All My Friends Who Play Guitar" cascades a wash of sound like the waves on a beach as Martin sings about a life spent on the road. The chorus of "Can You Play Drums?" has Martin lamenting that "I already know what we're gonna play" and in "Things Like This Help Me" he "stays up late [to] fix all the sounds." For this musical brew, all influences are fair game including The Smiths ("Give Up the War") and Roy Orbison ("Night Music"), although like the best cooks, the ingredients are combined to create a completely new dish with only hints of the original sources. My personal favorite is "I Like Your Photographs", a mesmerizing epic of a song whose topic still eludes me. The six minutes of this song are a well-written novel with chapters that flow effortlessly into each other. This beautifully lonely indie-pop masterpiece will appeal to fans of Radiohead, Belle & Sebastian, and The Smiths and is sure to send shivers of delight down your wicked spine.

This review first appeared in WhatzUp, August 2001.

Review - Terry Scott Taylor - John Wayne

In this review I say this isn't Mr. Taylor's "best work." Was I on crack?!?!? This album is one of my favorite TST solo albums. Insightful lyrics and melodic heavier music... good stuff! The line of "Find what you need in what you've got" has spoken to me many, many times over the years.

It must be nice to have so many songs floating around inside you. Terry Taylor, the man behind the bands Daniel Amos, The Swirling Eddies, Lost Dogs, and the music for the videogame Neverhood has released John Wayne, a collection of ten songs under his own name. Stylistically, John Wayne is a mixture of the raw sound of Bibleland and the introspective lyrics of Songs of the Heart, both released by the band Daniel Amos. The album opens with "Writer's Block", an ominous, orchestral, epic song backed by aggressive strings. "Mr. Flutter" is a Byrds-influenced rock piece continuing the theme of the previous song with "I'm tryin' to write a song but I don't have the words and my kids need a doctor but I'm not insured and my wife she looks pale, she got the check in the mail and it's not the amount we were thinking about." "Boomtown" is a rolling rocker that is rounded out perfectly by the slippery, noodling bass line of Tim Chandler, my personal favorite bassist. "You Told Them Exactly What I Didn't Say" shows the influence of Dylan while "Big Shot & Miniature Girl" has a John Lennon meets Beachboys feel to it that would have made it at home on the Zoom Daddy Swirling Eddies album. "Ten Gallon Hat" is a humorous country song about having "a ten gallon hat over my devil horns" with a simple, sticky melody and the obligatory slide lap steel guitar. As a compliment to the dark "Writer's Block", Taylor answers his own questions with the profound "Chicken Crosses the Road", a sad, resigned song where he contemplates his position in life, ending with the lyrics "find what you need in what you've got." While this would have been a perfect album closer, Taylor does one better, showing his ability to craft songs that are not only catchy but beautiful as well with the breathtaking "You Lay Down". While not his best work, this is a solid release with scads of rich Beachboys/Beatles harmonies, horribly memorable melodies, Tim Chandler's incredibly creative bass work, and honest lyrics, all combined into ten energetic, enthusiastic songs that reveal the amazing songwriting abilities of a man proving he is more than a musical footnote.

This review first appeared in WhatzUp, July 1999.

Review - Terry Scott Taylor - Avocado Faultline

This is an album that continues to grow on me. Plus there are many excellent songs that are easy and fun to play on the guitar (chords are here. Originally meant to be a calling card to get his foot in the door as a song-salesman in Nashvegas, or so I've heard. I've also heard that "Pie Hole" is about the (now former) wife of one his many band members.

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In his first acoustic album the prolific doppelganger Terry Scott Taylor has tackled the singer/songwriter genre and pegged it perfectly. The music on Avocado Faultline is a blend of pop, rock, country, and Americana folk-song story telling music. Taylor has taken the laid-back, relaxed vocal style of Don Williams, mixed in Jimmy Buffet's playful sense of melody and combined it with his own keen observations of the human condition. While I am normally quickly bored by this genre, Taylor manages to add enough musical twists and wry humor to bring me back, with each listen endearing these comfortable songs more.

With as much truth as humor, Taylor lambastes the Yoko Ono phenomenon in "Pie Hole" writing such great lines as "She thinks we'll consider her just one of us/ If she drinks like a sailor and knows how to cuss" and "I like restaurants or parties with mixed company / But there's times I like hanging out with must my buddies and me." While most of the album is very relaxed, "Built Her Like a Cloud" kicks things up with a great country-rock feel that would have been right at home on a Lost Dogs album, one of Terry Taylor's many side-bands. The eerie "With What I Should Have Said" is shockingly mid-90s Bob Dylan with comparisons to his Oh Mercy album inevitable. "Startin' Monday" is full of gentle humor as a kind of flip side to "Margueritaville" with Taylor taking the view of someone who's spent his life screwing around and ready to change... starting Monday. One of my favorite songs is where Taylor sings "You're a little long in the tooth, babe / Me, I'm puffy and under the weather / But the drunker I get... / Honey, you're looking better" and "Pretend I'm Elvis for just one night / I will call you Pricilla, if that's alright / Don't we look sorta like 'em / In the neon light? / Let's pretend I'm Elvis, darlin' / For just one night." Three guesses as to the name of the song.

With its many charms, Avocado Faultline should bring this talented artist a whole new audience. The album is highlighted by heartfelt lyrics and songs that mix intelligent artistic expression, gentle humor and commercial accessibility. This is Americana at it's best! If you can't find this album locally, go to www.silentplanetrecords.com

This review first appeared in WhatzUp, August 2000.

Review - Terry Scott Taylor - LITTLE, big

Not my favorite Terry Scott Taylor album. I don't think I've listened to it once since this review in 2002. Mayhaps I'll give it one more try but my recollection is that there just isn't a lot of sparkle.

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LITTLE, big, the latest solo offering by the prolific Terry Scott Taylor, is possibly his most personal project yet with the subject of each song being someone personally close to him, each viewed through the lens of the "everyday." While seemingly mundane, Taylor reveals his brilliance by being able to give the listener a gentle glimpse into the extraordinary that lies just behind the ordinary that we often take for granted.

As on his first two solo projects (including the timeless Knowledge & Innocence, which should be required listening for anyone who has lost a loved one to the icy hands of death), Taylor has collaborated with Rob Watson. Thanks to Watson's loving attention and studio wizardry, the six songs on this E.P. have an intimate yet orchestral sound, in many ways similar to the Beach Boys classic Pet Sounds, an album which Taylor holds as one of his favorites.

The title track comes the closest to capturing the Beatles feel of Knowledge & Innocence, loaded as it is with keyboards (Watson's main instrument), ethereal background vocals, thundering timpani, and orchestral spots of color. The lyrics set the theme for the album with lines like, "Goin' home to my little house / To my little wife and not so little kids / There inside my little world / Is the love I feel / So big." Flute, oboe and the occasional orchestral string flourish adorn the relaxed "Molly Is A Metaphor" where Taylor, with acoustic guitar in tow, uses the family cat to examine eternal love. The Beach Boys influence is extremely apparent in "Lovely Lilly Lou", a catchy tune built around a staccato piano melody and heaped with mounds of sounds like sleigh bells, wood blocks, timpani, a variety of organic keyboard sounds, and a bridge replete with a 1930s feel and honky-tonk piano. "Oh, Sweet Companion" is a song for Taylor's wife and although I'm sure she enjoyed it, it's a simplistic tune that seems out of place on this disc. Likewise, "Rob's And Carolee's" is full of inside jokes that were surely enjoyed by the title characters but the melody seems a bit forced and saccharine to my ears despite the lush orchestration. The final track, "Mama's In The Desert, Daddy's In The Sky", is classic Terry Scott Taylor. With acoustic guitar, strings, operatic female vocals and a melancholy melody, Taylor sings of his mother, "She's gone to talk to Daddy / And lay some flowers on his grave/ She says she knows Dad isn't there but / It helps her to get by." Both sorrowful and encouraging, the song brings this album of quaint and peaceful pop to a satisfying close. Available at www.danielamos.com. This review first appeared in WhatzUp, November 2002.

Review - Imaginarium

Thanks to reposting this review I remembered about the game Boombots that I had yet to purchase. And thanks to Amazon and a recent raise I was just barely able to afford the $6.38 (including shipping) to have the game shipped. All the reviews agree that the game is humorous but not very fun. I CAN BARELY WAIT FOR THE NOT-FUN TO BEGIN!!!!

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If you are one who thinks John Denver is the peak of musical creativity, read no further. For the rest of us, what you are about to read will boggle your mind and challenge your sense of reality, but I swear on a stack of sausages that it is true. A few years back I reviewed an album called The Neverhood, an award winning collection of songs from the PC game by the same name. This was no ordinary video game music. Rather, it sounded like clay, malleable dixieland blue grass on steroids. This album sold out rather quickly and now goes for over $50 on eBay. The creative brain that brewed this concoction also created music for two subsequent games, Skullmonkeys and BoomBots. Now, for the first time since the birth of Jerry Springer, the music from all three of these games is available on two jam-packed discs for a mere $20 at www.danielamos.com . My earlier review of The Neverhood is available on the extensive WhatzUp's extensive CD Review web page so I'll not repeat the review here except to say that these psychedelic blues songs will soon have you singing along with "Homina Homina!"

The second CD of the set contains twenty-six Skullmonkey songs and five from Boombots. Taking the "monkey" theme into another dimension, many of these almost instrumentals have a strong jungle beat. But variety is key here. Out of the twenty-six songs, you get almost twenty-six different styles of music. Yessum, everything from alpine accordions in 3/4 time with yodeling to wigged out chipmunks to theremins to belly dancing shuffles to spastic ragtime to ... well, you get the idea. Lyrically, this album is much like the first with many nonsense non-sequitur ramblings and few actual "lyrics", though after a few listens, you'll know every grunt and incoherent utterance. "Elevated Structure of Terror" drove my brother Joel to literal tears with its mumbled, drunken lyrics amid Tim Chandlers amazingly inventive bass playing. And then there's "Psychedelic Boogie Child", the 70s disco song full of wahwah pedals, shag carpeting, and lava lamps. Speaking of bonus levels, the amazing bonus level song, imaginatively titled "Lil' Bonus Room", finds Uncle Terry urging the purchase of multiple games because "I get residuals for every game that's sold." Both CDs are headlong hurtles into reckless fun. In addition to their old man, both of my boys love these songs. No one is immune from the infectious insanity that, like a good Bugs Bunny cartoon, contains enough ear candy for the kids and yet has jokes that only adults will get.

This review first appeared in WhatzUp, January 2001.

Review - The Neverhood

What a wonderfully weird and inventive album! Thankfully they released it three times and it's probably paying for Terry's retirement. I suspect that this music is the reason behind the problems with KMG releasing the early 80s Daniel Amos albums, but that's just an edjumacated hunch. Also they just released Return To The Neverhood which you can get here.

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The folks at DreamWorks made a video game like no other, The Neverhood, a bizarre claymation world of strange characters and even stranger happenings. This world needed music as unique as it, and they turned to Terry Taylor. Few recognize his name, even though he has been sternum-deep in music for over twenty years. Regardless, he was up to the task and managed to create the most creative un-video game video game music ever made, so much so that it won some big award for Video Game music of the year. And now it's available to the consumer on an affordable, convenient compact disc.

The music on this CD is impossible to categorize. Drunken blues, psychedelic Dixieland, a jazz combo on powerful hallucinogens. It all fits. Taylor combines acoustic guitar, bass and drums with saxophones, clarinets, banjos and just about any other instrument lying around the studio to create a swirling miasma of plastic sound with an Elfmanesque sense of fun. The lyrics, what little is intelligible about them, are also sung in this same malleable fashion. "Everybody Way-O" is a drunken stumbling of blues. "Homina Homina" ends with wheezy, maniacal laughter that somehow fits perfectly with the music. Most songs are either instrumentals or incorporate nonsense syllables as the main lyrical component while a few attempt such lyrics as "I put 'em in my hat/And I eat 'em just like that/ I put 'em in my ears and in my shoes" from the song "Potatoes, Tomatoes, Gravy, and Peas." Everyone who has heard this CD falls in love with it. My three-year old son is completely fascinated by these strange, syncopated rantings and my wife, usually the first to call my music "weird", has even found herself singing "Dum da dum doi doi" now and then. If for some sad reason you can't find this CD locally, it is available on the neverhood.com web site. You will not be disappointed, but you might be confused.

This review first appeared in WhatzUp, September 1998.