Chutes und Ladders

Chutes und Ladders, Raft-Rapped Families, Bubbles auf der Barrel
Umphrey's McGee, Anchor Drops;Kammerflimmer Kollektief's Hysteria; Shukar's
Bear Tamers Music; Ladies W.C.

by Don Allred
December 7th, 2004 12:50 PM Issue 49

Umphrey's Mcgee:
Anchor Drops
(Sci Fidelity)
Kammerflimmer Kollektief:
Hysteria
(Quecksilber import)

Shukar :
Bear Tamers Music
(Sub Rosa import )

Ladies W.C. S/T
(Shadoks import )


Word on the nerdvine is that Umphrey's McGee just might be the next Phish.
But instead of phat patchouli and ghee glee, McGee have got Anchor Drops of
whiteout, bleak words, and voices, surrounded by multicolored bubbles of
accompaniment. Despite Jake Cinninger's brainy, heady mix of plucked and picked notes,
early results remind me of my old (8 a.m.) art appreciation class. Until
"Uncommon," which announces, "Something about me stinks." Confession is good for
the soul; ditto the subsequent carbonated SUVision of tracks 10 through
(unlisted) 14. With "Uncommon," an enjoyable half-hour.
Kammerflimmer Kollektief's reissued Hysteria contains (bonus miles of)
gazegrazing analogtronica and cracked chamber jazz. Despite the title, they're a
raft-happy family, in which bosoms of bubbles gently rock insomniac, increasingly
marginal honkers and tweeters. Pretty much the reverse effect of those
disappointing Anchor Drops tracks (the kinda pictures my dad used to buy just for their
frames)
(But I should say that the seemingly marginal or subservient or secondary elements of
several genres and subgenres
were my gateway, and increasingly what I find most appealing when  frontmen sound
 too predicable, incl. in a museum masterpiece way---bass and drums, sometimes
keys and others, pulling me back in, in ways I forgot to or never did really focus on.)

Still, McGee and Kammerflimmer both need the no-fiddling-about Gypsy boot
camp of Shukar's Bear Tamers Music. Shukar march mouths and spoons and "wooden
barrel's percussion" and also "primitive percussions" around, teaching us to
scatgrowl "Tamango's Jazz," though not tamely. BTM's a fresh breath of hairy
bubble thunder.

But Shukar's no-budget bubble-cise is a little too crystal ball for me, so I
gotta go visit Ladies W.C.'s Ladies W.C. Once an obscenely priced vinyl
rarity, it's now a mid-priced CD, and still vintage ('69) Venezuelan psychedelia,
sporting convincing enough Californiac lyrics and vocals, times an expansive,
homegrown exuberance. A few ballads, but mainly, "To Walk on Water" goes
"splash-splash-splash"; the wah-wah goes "oink-oink-oink"; jungles get smoked; 'shrooms
tattooed. On feet far too bare for Caracas, so (as tended to happen all over,
in 1969), this leads nowhere. But "nowhere" still translates as "Utopia" in
Ladies W.C., and also rat here!

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Check http://www.forcedexposure.com/ for Hysteria, Bear Tamers Music, and Ladies W.C.
Umphrey's McGee play Irving Plaza December 10.

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