Customer Reviews

Zippo Songs

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(0)
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2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

I first heard this on the New Sounds show on Public Radio. The main group of songs is based on the weird slogans American soldiers had engraved on their Zippo lighters in Vietnam, so you can imagine the kinds of emotions evoked. And the songs based on Donald Rumsfeld quotes are hilarious. The whole thing is orchestrated in a kind of hallucinatory electronic groove that veers from rock to modern abstraction and back to stark simplicity, just as the songs progress from mood to mood until the final apocalyptic ending. The tunes are haunting and the playing is brilliant.

This is some of the best new music I've heard this year. Kline's songs are haunting. The lyrics are simple and short (they fit on a Zippo lighter after all), the tone is quiet and subdued, and the settings are often spare (just voice and guitar and electronics). But the overall effect combines to move you as much as a 110-person orchestra. Quite a feat. If Schubert were writing today, this is what it would sound like.

That review below by Mr Dandy is ridiculous. I love this album, it moves me every time I put it on. I listen to it for sheer pleasure as well as for a potent reminder of what our soldiers must be thinking and feeling in Iraq. Bleckmann's distant vibratoless voice perfectly captures the numbing, conflicted reality of the everyman who serves, the "everysoldier" at war. My wife loves this cd too, as do my co-workers. As my son says, this is the sh-t!

The concept of using speech or writing not originally intended as lyrics can work brilliantly. It doesn't here. Zippo Songs doesn't have enough wit or melody to develop what could have been an interesting concept. Others, with greater musical sensibilities, have made memorable tunes from found writing. Harry Partch's "Barstow" comes to mind. Partch used graffiti written by hitchhikers on a highway railing to craft a very funny and moving suite of miniatures. It is an American classic. What happens in Zippo Songs springs from a very different approach, reeking of academia. Every line begins with a poppish tonality reminiscent, but not on par with, Laurie Anderson. Every line ends with a clunker note intended to sound like an out-take from a twelve tone row. This affectation is the gambit for a classification as "classical" music. Achtung, professor. Folks who enjoy the characteristic sound of twelve tone row composition, (Stravinsky's wonderful "Sermon, Narrative, and a Prayer" works for me!) versus those who affect such tastes in school, will find Zippo Songs to be juvenile. Minimalism is no excuse for the dullness demonstrated here. Perhaps this recording is not all that bad, and if you've never heard Partch, Anderson, Eno or Stravinsky you might even listen to it more than once...my interest didn't last that long. And as to the politics, you won't be striking any blows against the empire by spending your capital on this recording.

This music may be a bit hard to grasp for the doggedly literal minded. The songs are inhabited by the voices of ghosts, yet Theo Bleckmann sings them like an angel, floating with an almost other-worldly legato. While each part is beautiful, the overall effect of the cd as a whole is greater than the sum of its parts, a deeply moving experience.

this is an important album. i've been following kline's work since the
mid-90's, and find his voice to be unpredictable and always exciting. he isn't
afraid to write beautiful music. with an edge. buy this cd. it will haunt you.
message to kline: write more songs!

On high praise from the NYTimes I blindly bought this disc and at first listening I was so enthralled by the text that I didn't realize how mediocre the music really is. I'll give it to Kline that he knows how to pick good texts but the music is just stagnant and fails to capture the intensity or drama of succesful minimalism, a school from which he clearly hails. His use of electric instruments makes pop-rock sound avant-garde and the interludes are incredibly tiresome sound-collage affairs. Ultimately it makes for an intersting one time listen but fails to say anything powerful. Borrow this from the library if you have to but don't waste your money.