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Shawn Kilroy is back with his first offering since his impressive
independent debut The Neon Gate. The first two tracks establish
right off the bat that while Kilroy has maintained a rock base to
his music, this time around it seems like he's haunted by the ghosts
of electro pioneers like Herbie Hancock, and not the Who
or the Rolling Stones. The Neon Gate was put together
as a conglomeration of tracks from various genres that were stylistically
very different from each other. This time, the tracks have a common
foundation, but Kilroy expands upon it by peppering the music with
different styles like rap, blues, spoken word, funk, etc. To give
you an idea of the range here, consider "2 Feet Deep"; it
starts off with a drum sequence reminiscent of NIN's "Head
Like a Hole", fires off some rapid-fire staccato rap vocals and
is accompanied by some Tumbadoras drumming in the background. The
album is pretty strong up 'til "Happy Birthday Mr. Lincoln",
a track regarding the nature of equality and Abraham Lincoln's
musings on the subject of slavery. It's an interesting homage to the
former president, but doesn't really fit in with the rest of the album.
The remaining tracks are hit or miss, with "Coal Dragon",
having an interesting story tie-in with the album title about a detonations
expert Kilroy once met who had tattoos of a Unicorn and a Thai Stick
Dragon burned off of his forearms in an explosion that went awry.
The song is a gloomy and pseudo-industrial ballad that's a fine piece
of work that captures the lonely silence of being deep in the earth,
but it also doesn't really mesh with the slicker, cooler visions of
anti-hip electro darkness conjured up by the first half of the album.
Since the last 3 tracks aren't listed, I'm not going to really judge
their contiguity with the rest of the album. However, Track 13 is
worthy of mention because it is pretty strange. It sounds like a press
conference for a guy claiming to be a master of the arcane arts and
he's talking about a nemesis of sorts, a black magician who uses pictures
of Moe Howard (of the Three Stooges) to conduct destructive
attacks, and pictures of Ed Sullivan to talk to the dead. Uh,
yeah. Ok.
The two aforementioned examples aside, Thai Stick Dragon is
still a worthy follow up to The Neon Gate, which was also not
perfect, but managed to live up to its ambitious packaging. And let's
get to the packaging: This one is so cold and remote that the character
on the front resembles what Tom Cruise must look like at night
when his Church of Scientology handlers flip his switch into the "off"
position. (I think it's right next to the Gay / Not Gay switch.) Although,
this person-masquerading-as-mannequin still has more genuine personality
in his shaded, vacuous stare than Cruise did in War of the Worlds.
-JD
Standout tracks: Snake Charmer, Daughter of the Devil, The Seed
on My Pants
Track Listing:
1. Snake Charmer
2. Daughter of the Devil
3. This Piano
4. 2 Feet Deep
5. She's Afraid
6. Happy Birthday Mr. Lincoln
7. The Seed on My Pants
8. X-Mas Eve Eve
9. Coal Dragon
10. In My Time of Dying
11. Track 11 (unlisted)
12. Track 12 (unlisted)
13. Track 13 (unlisted)
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