Search - Cheer-Accident :: Enduring the American Dream

Ana Ng and Faust are getting old...

Brian Block | Greensboro, North Carolina | 03/16/1999

(4 out of 5 stars)

"Something like the final product of setting the Communist Manifesto to the tunes from the first 2 They Might Be Giants records, jetting the results and a multitrack round-trip to the 19th century for Sergei Rachmaninoff to record a version of, then giving his tapes to Faust (with special guest-star Charles Ives) for extensive remixing. The disadvantage of these comparson games is how useless they are if you don't know the referents, so if that's you, well, this particular release has major-key left-wing revolution jingles stretched on the rack into wondrously grandiose piano pieces and interlaced with all kinds of weird strangely-tuned interrupting riffs, drones, electronic jags, and other such eruptions. Occasionally Cheer-Accident forget to redefine music in favor of ignoring musical requirements altogether, but "Vacuum"'s buildup of interlocking drones is a remarkable study in Krautrock construction (poor frequent-replay value, but very worth hearing twice), and "Dismantling The Berlin Waltz", an actual song and the Platonic ideal of the sound I've just been describing, has joined my all-time favorite songs shortlist (but do hit forward-skip when the closing siren kicks in, 6:20 through)."The Law Of Attraction" is more Gastr Del Sol-like: unperiodic strums, sounding like the bass notes of an autoharp with no key selected, setting a thin high voice singing the oddly romantic "We collide at the intersection/ I fly through the windshield into your arms/ we embrace/ the ambulance sirens/ as the sound of metal is cut away/ we display intermingled remains". "Failure", on the other hand, plays half its length as pop, like one of Ben Folds Five's serious numbers, before evolving into the group sound and then into a peppy brass arrangement. I've owned this album for 14 months as I write and it just now is emerging among my most-played records of the moment. Some things take a while to get past the "Huh?" stage."

Remarkable work from Chicago's finest

El DZ | Chicago, IL USA | 03/23/2000

(5 out of 5 stars)

"Cheer-Accident outdid themselves on this finely crafted work of art. It's a listening experience, complete with droning noises, patchwork edits, and beautiful melodies. Parts of it recall the ultra-poppy WHY ALBUM of a few years earlier; most of it is in a new realm of music, not often explored by anyone. The band is one of the best I've ever witnessed in live performance, and they're as creative and varied as any musical artist in the history of modern music (i.e., the last eighty years or so). If you don't own this record, buy it without regret. And if you have any spare copies of their old stuff on cassette and/or vinyl, send me an e-mail."