Bob Drake

A set of twisty, forty-ideas-a-minute, niftily arranged, irredeemably eccentric, but strangely brilliant songs that skip blithely across genre borders - from Nashville through the Miskatonic by way of the Beach Boys… even the production values range across the history of recording, sometimes switching inside a single song; so it’s a high-information ride - but still engagingly listenable. So far so good: another crafted, dense, idiosyncratic studio album. Now comes the twist. Finished with his versions, Bob Drake now sends the raw songs – melody and chords only – to  Dave Kerman (ds), David Campbell (bs, vc) and Kavus Torabi (guit, vc) and, a few months later, they all assemble at the Crumbling Tomes studio to work the songs up for a performance. Bob is in the band but the band is not being taught his interpretations and arrangements; it has to find its own. At the end of the rehearsal they give a show to an invited audience which is recorded, as it is. So now we have a second great album - quite different from Bob’s own. On the CD, both versions sit side-by-side, each very different, but still very closely linked to the other. Fun to listen to as well as being a study, if you are so inclined. That’s experimental.