Frankie Sparo - Welcome Crummy Mystics

Frankie Sparo's third release is a little masterpiece of highly original, stylistically diverse songwriting. Sparo's debut record, My Red Scare (cst013) was comprised mostly of songs played solo, unadorned, wrought only from guitar, voice and beatbox. The two years since have seen forays into broader instrumentation and collaborations with additional players. A tour with Silver Mt. Zion yielded a set of string and digital arrangements (some of which are documented on a 2001 EP, cst017) and many of these same players contribute to the new songs on Welcome Crummy Mystics. Meanwhile, Frankie Sparo's live shows back in Canada have featured an official second member in the person of N. Moss (piano, keyboards, backing vox). Her playing, singing and arranging can be heard throughout the new record.

Sparo's inimitable intimacy is well-preserved on several of these new tracks; the fragility of guitar paired with Moss' piano/organ can be heard to great effect on "Bright Angel Park" and "This Lie". With an additional element - bass in "My Sistr", digital treatments in "Camera" - the carefully expanded palettes play with countervailing forms: modern jazz ballad and naive music-box lullaby. But Sparo has also assembled larger ad hoc bands for various set pieces on the album. Album opener "Hospitalville" is a fluid, slow-burning swing complete with drums, bass and trumpets - a brilliant arrangement set pumping by Efrim's heavy compression treatment (he recorded the album at the Hotel2Tango). A men's choir later makes a brief appearance, as do some digital de/reconstructions, on the record's two rock songs, "Akzidenz Grotesk" and "Back on Speed". Sparo can always be counted on for top-notch reflection and erudition in the lyrics dept., so if you enjoy language, give these a close listen. A very fine and complex collection of poetic music.

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