Thursday, May 10, 2012

John Singer Sergeant

John Dufilho is one of those great, underappreciated songwriters, the main guy behind the Deathray Davies and I Love Math and the drummer for Apples in Stereo. Apparently, he doesn't really like his own voice, though, because, for his latest project he has enlisted a whole mess of vocalists to interpret his songs. They range from semi-famous -- Ben Kweller, Rhett Miller, Bob Schneider, Chris Walla -- to relatively obscure (and possibly imaginary), these singers, but weirdly, they all take on Dufilho's world-weary, shrug of a style, murmuring wonderful lines (my favorite: "it's hard to run uphill...on stilts...it's not my fault that's just the way I'm built") in the most unassuming manner.

I'm really liking a few of these, let's see Kweller's "Mountains, Oceans, Elephants," Brandon Carr & Dylan Silvers' "Why Does Your Moog Affect Me So?" (a dead ringer for "Midnight at the Black Nail Polish Factory"), and Salim Nourallah's "Crooked Teeth Like A Broken Piano."

American Songwriter is streaming the whole album here.

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