Album Reviews

When Aaron Copland titled his Abraham Lincoln musical tribute “A Lincoln Portrait,” he was using the word “portrait” figuratively.

The Red Krayola With Art and Language, yes, more or less the same Red Krayola that issued its first album way back in 1966 on the same International Artists label that was home to Roky Erickson’s 13th Floor Elevators, uses the term “portrait” literally in its five American portraits of Wile E. Coyote (the famous cartoon roadrunner), Presidents George W. Bush (the famous cartoon president) and Jimmy (Israel is Apartheid) Carter, John (Duke) Wayne and Ad Reinhardt, the last of whom was an abstract painter who died in 1967 at the age of 53.

So yes, the lyrics to these portraits consist of microscopic facial encounters, while the music accompanying each description is intentionally familiar in order to enhance your comfort zone. So accompanying Wile E. Coyote’s “portrait” is Bo Diddley’s “Roadrunner.” Bush gets the Texas state song “Texas, Our Texas,” and two other Tex-centric tunes, one of which was written by Kore Krayola member Mayo Thompson. Carter gets? Right! “Georgia On my Mind” and another tune, while “Duke” Wayne gets, among others, Max Steiner’s theme from “The Searchers.” Mozart’s “Piano Sonata No. 6” and whiffs of the Jagger/Richards composition “Paint it Black,” accompany Reinhardt’s portrait.

While the musical choices are hardly subtle or oblique, the dreamy, soft-spoken, drawing room manner (a full blooded American drawing room) in which they are played by Krayola leader (hold the) Mayo Thompson on piano, guitar and vocals, drummer Alex Dower (Victim), pianist Tom Rogerson (Three Trapped Tigers), guitarist Tom Watson (Slovenly) sax and trumpeter “Q,” with additional contributions by Jim O’Rourke and Gina Birch (The Raincoats) surely is!

Upon first listen this is an easily dismissible mocking work of droll, intellectual silliness. The not so subtle musical puns pile up as it goes, egged on by the bordello-like piano parts that give the whole thing a Ken Burns-like turn of the 19th century aura. I see red velvet walls. You may see other things.

It would be easy to give one listen and be done with this high conceptual art but damn if it doesn’t get better the more you listen, in part because the recording is astonishingly good. I don’t use the word “astonishing” freely either. It’s full blown audiophile quality in terms of harmonic and textural accuracy, transparency and especially vivid three- dimensional imaging. The drums in particular are presented in “Avatar”-like three- dimensionality—and that’s the CD. I haven’t heard the LP. I have no idea how this was recorded (never mind sometimes asking why!) but however it was done, I wish more groups and individuals would pay attention to its Blumlein-like front to back imaging and copy it.

Is this pretentious contemporary installation “artiness” or something more enduring? I guess only time will tell. It’s not for nothing that the CD artwork looks like lined note paper. If this sort of project piques your curiousity, Five American Portraits is certainly worth investigating. It’s certainly more rewarding than what I heard during my last visit to Avery Fisher Hall.