Customer Reviews

Play With Your Head

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4 star:		(3)
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Help!! Candy Butchers "Play With Your Head" has taken up permanent residence in my brain! I can't get "Play With Your Head" out of my head! My brain has been taken hostage by the sounds on this album...the songs continuously rattling around inside my head all day long. And I am occassionally heard belting out loud the words "you belong to me now" or "she let me get away with everything" at work, resulting in many curious looks from those around me. It is getting to be rather embarrassing! I need a hostage negotiator to free my brain of these wonderful tunes! Uh...on second thought...nevermind. I don't mind Mike Viola's tunes playing in my head all day.

This is one HECK of an album people. A bit on the short side at 37 minutes, but the best 37 minutes of music I have heard this year...atleast. I can't believe it has only garnered one review thus far. In a just world this stuff would be all over the airwaves...blasting out of every car window...shot into space in a time capsule...uh...maybe not that! Highlights include...well...heck...the album is one big highlight. The musical equivalent to Dominique Wilkens. The Sportscenter of albums.

Play With Your Head...get it and let it play with yours.

Mike Viola and the Candy Butchers live! It's been two and a half years since the debut release of "Falling Into Place" and the wait has been WORTH IT!

The album cover to "Play With Your Head" shows Mike Viola sitting alone in a movie theatre looking at the screen showing the names of the tracks to this album. It is very appropriate. Pete Donnelly plays bass and Michael Levesque bangs on the drums but, this CD is basically Mike Viola's baby. He wrote, produced, sang, and played the excellent guitars on this eleven track 37 minute offering. By the time I was halfway through a second listen to the whole CD, I could tell this CD was a keeper!

I was a fan of New Wave back in the early 1980s, before it became trendy, and took a liking to the work of Graham Parker. Mike's singing voice and inflections are noticeably similar so, this gave me a slightly favorable bias initially. There are plenty of great hooks all over (reminds me a little of the Strokes) and it is quite obvious that these guys are pretty decent musicians. "Ruby's Got A Big Idea" has 'hit song' written all over it! It is infectious, full of great harmonies, fun, and distinctive while timing in at just over three minutes. "Tough Hang" could easily be a fine single as well. The lyrics to all songs are included and worth reading. Mike is quite good with the pen as well reminding me some of Elvis Costello and early Talking Heads. The sad Elvis ambiance is heard most in the near accoustic "Make No Mistake" lamenting disappointment in a selfish friend. "All eyes are fixed on you; Fade in your past crashes in waves on the lawn; Fade out your last laugh lasts a little too long; In your contract there's a clause so you better save your applause; When I play; Make no mistake". Shades of David Gray can also be heard on "Call Off the Dogs". Don't let these allusions to other musicians mislead you though. They are only reference points for the newcomer. The Candy Butchers have their own sound; they are no cover band that happens to be putting out original muzak. And they have a FUTURE!

Definitely give this CD a try. The first play will need another before it really begins to sink positively into you. After that, you will be hooked! Highly recommended.

I admit, I bought this album because the comparisons to Elvis Costello, the Beatles, and Brian Wilson. Basically any album that illicits comparison to Brian I am sure to buy. The first time I listened to this album all the way through I was a little dissappointed. Consistent, yes, but nothing stuck out. The voice (his voice is one that every singer would walk on fire for) immediately impressed, of course, but the songwriting was weaker than expected and the album sounds as if made on a shoestring budget. Not in sound quality, but in that it seems as though he had more costly ideas than his label was willing to give in to. I was reading the next day though and the CD was still in my player, so out of sheer laziness I put it on again. This time the songs stuck. Each track revealed itself to be complex and intelligent, particularly in the lyrics. I would have to say every time I listen it gets better and better. It's also refreshing to hear someone with a retro vibe who does not utterly give into to sixties experimentation and pretensions. I would recommend this to any fan of Elvis Costello, Nick Lowe, the Beatles, the Beach Boys, and any modern power pop music.

I recently saw Mike Viola when he came to Chicago as an opening act for Robyn Hitchcock. I heard the acoustic guitar versions of these songs then, and liked them so much I decided to purchase the album. What a surprise that the songs really rock out with the other two members! My 12 year old was at the concert, and I don't think he was much interested then, but he really digs the album with its harder guitar and bass workouts. Plus, what could be cooler than hearing "I want to kiss a suburban girl" as the opening line of the album.

Power-pop hasn't sounded this good in a long time. Not since Matthew Sweet told us about his girlfriend in the mid-90's has something this authentic and energetic been released. Candy Butchers' newest disc, Play With Your Head, will undoubtedly make my year-end top ten list, and it's only January. Front-man Mike Viola got attention for singing in the film That Thing You Do, but his vocals here are more reminiscent of Steven Tyler than Tom Hanks or Joaquim Phoenix. "My Monkey Made A Man Out Of Me" is an ethnic-tinged romp in the sack while the dark Beck-esque "My Heart Isn't In It" fills the post-Midnite Vultures void. "It's A Line" is one of the smarter tracks on the album playing with rock clichés turning "restless thoughts into bad poetry," as "Make No Mistake" and "Call Off The Dogs" shows the more acoustic side to Viola. Hopefully they can get their own club tour going and won't become just another opening act for Lifehouse. Play With Your Head is the first great disc of 2002.

Candy Butcher's second outing is a bit darker than the first. No song pops out like "Hills of L.A." from the "Falling Into Place" CD. But the CD does hang together as a cohesive whole. "I'm a mess, let's take a trip to the stip mall," he sings as Viola's guitar insurgently pulses and Mike Levesque pounds the drum skins on "Worry My Dome." Recalling George Harrison, Indian sitars intro the rocker "My Monkey Made a Man Out of Me." It is apparently a tongue-in-cheek celebration of a drug dependence, "I was looking for a cure without a disease." "You Belong to Me Now" slows to midtempo with a bright pop sound & perky melody. "Ruby's Got a Big Idea" hits territory somewhere between "Rocky Racoon" & "Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da." "Tough Hang" references George Harrison's "Little Piggies" on a smoking track that seems to be about a guy hanging out with his ex & her new man. The cover art has Mike Viola sitting in a theatre; and on the slow "Baby, It's a Long Way Down" he sings, "In the end it's not how you played; it's what you find while sweeping up the stage." "It's A Line" is an electric rocker that contemplates how time dulls the dreams of younger years. When I first played this CD with my wife in the car, "I Let Her Get Away" came on. When Mike sang, "Looks like one of the seeds I have sown spread inside of her like mold on the cement basement floor where I laid her down," she objected strongly to comparing a baby to mold. The sharpness of the lyric cuts against the pretty pop melody. "My Heart Isn't In It" sounds like a ghostly science fiction theme with a rap chorus and almost works for me when the surf guitar reverbs. The highest achievement, albeit a sometimes difficult one with porno star references contrasted with impotence, is the gorgeous "Make No Mistake" which shows Mike Viola to be a passionate singer, "Fade in your past crashes in waves on the lawn; fade out your last laugh lasts a little too long." The CD concludes with the lullaby, "Call Off the Dogs." "Play With Your Head" challenges the listener. While Viola may not get a gold record with this approach, it is excellent in its reach and inventiveness. U snooze U lose!

Even though Mike Viola's name has been taken off the marquee, this so-called group remains a vehicle for his songs, singing, and sonic ideas. And this time he has come up with a much more solid and consistent piece of work than his/their last album. Still rejoicing that the British invaded us back in the Sixties and several times since, Viola has put together a satisfying mix of up-tempo rockers and particularly strong ballads. Viola's hook-laden ditties are filled with clever word play and presented in his attractively raspy voice. There are still a couple of tracks that don't try hard enough and a couple that try too hard, but there's enough good stuff here to make us go back and re-evaluate that first album.