MP3 Tris McCall & The New Jack Trippers - I´m Assuming You´re All In Bands

Electric harpsichord punk, songs about Brooklyn. Recorded live in the studio. No guitars, but we make a racket anyway.

14 MP3 Songs
ROCK: Punk, POP: New Wave



Details:
This is an album of highly poetic reflections on life in and around a Williamsburg rock and roll band. Portraits of the floppy-haired, black-and-white-striped, skinny-jeaned Brooklyn neighborhood (my prejudices, not Tris') are sung, spoken, and shouted over funky bass lines and glorious electric harpsichord. Yes, electric harpsichord. But, before we get to that, let's focus on the lyrics. Tris McCall is a street photographer, a beat poet, a journalist, an *anthropologist*.... The album was recorded live, in sequence, and it sounds like it. Which is to say: with the occasional missed beat and bad note, it's full of heat and urgency, a special moment captured. The band is on fire. And certainly tight enough; drums and bass lock in place when needed, and female backing vox surround Tris with oohs and ahhs, while supporting his most delicate sentiments, ready to catch his falling voice.... Pound your fist and bang your head to the powerful "An Ass of U and Me" and get down with "Not Another Song About You," an infectious and weirdly awesome marriage of Devo and Springsteen, an examination and redefinition of rock and roll. -- Stephen Mejias, *Stereophile.com*

I like Tris McCall. Iâd be at his CD release party tonight at Maxwellâs if I didnât have to watch my kid. As I type this, the audience is watching a CPA-ish guy lead a crack band thru carefully orchestrated arrangements of songs about what itâs like to love New Jersey, but to try to play rock ânâ roll (and keep the aforementioned crack band
together) in ultra-hipster Williamsburg, Brooklyn.  The fact that this is a damn near impossible task to accomplish has inspired his new collection of tunes: *Iâm Assuming Youâre All In Bands*... which, of course, we all ainât, but youâll get all the funpaininsaneangstweirdnesssheeridiotjoy vicariously via this disk....  Tris writes literate, tuneful (sometimes even show-tuneful) stuff, and sprays out his sardonic lyrics stream-of-unself-consciously. These are keyboard-based songs, fingered out mainly on an electric harpsichord (one of those vintage plexiglass Baldwins, I wonder?), and spiked with âfound soundâ audio samples that add some real vicious commentary to Trisâs bitter-but-still-polite observations. Itâs an interesting choice of instruments â as un-rock as it is possible to be in timbre -but also a defiant (punk!) choice since it sez "Iâm gonna do what I want, âcause I can play this thing..." -- Chris Butler, *Jersey Beat*