Steve Taylor and Daniel Smith – a match made in sock heaven…

Wow To The Deadness
Steve Taylor and The Danielson Foil
www.facebook.com/stevetaylorpresents
Splint Entertainment
6 tracks 15:14                                                             

Last year’s tour in support of Steve Taylor and The Perfect Foil’s long-awaited Goliath project found the quirky super-group supported by the equally-quirky (and equally legendary) Brother Danielson and The Nine-Fruit Tree. Okay, so we’ve already lost some of you - let me explain….                                                                                                        

Taylor’s ‘new’ band included John Mark Painter (Fleming and John) on bass, Jimmy Abegg (Vector and other projects, including solo work) on guitars, and Peter Furler (newsboys – heard of ‘em?) on drums – this band was known as Steve Taylor and The Perfect Foil. Now back to that tour… the opening act was Daniel Smith in his Nine Fruit Tree persona – meaning he backed his vocals with percussion and played acoustic guitar, um… wearing a giant tree costume.

This was obviously a match made in sock heaven.

So now we have this group called Steve Taylor and The Danielson Foil. Why? Because they can. And we’re glad they did. Daniel Smith’s child-like vocals and unique musical approach compliment Taylor and his cronies well. Steve’s deep, sometimes sinister, sometimes raucous vocals are often paired note-for note by Smith’s high-pitched version of the same melody – a technique done to good effect on the album’s title track (which has an intro that sounds like it could just as easily go into Wilson Pickett’s “In The Midnight Hour” but ends up in a totally different musical universe). Other songs feature moments where each of the two lead singers take the spotlight for a while.

Musically, Wow To The Deadness is an interesting mix of the bold, minimalist punk-pop we heard on Goliath and the staccato genre-defying primal child compositions of the Danielson Family albums. The over-all effect is more primal, more punk (or post-punk, if you want to sound trendy), and certainly more in your face. Certainly, Abegg’s guitar is more textured, fuzz-toned and sonically aggressive, Painter’s bass is darker and more hard-edged (oh – and he gets to play trumpet on “The Dust Patrol”), and Furler’s drumming is garage-band raucous. Only one track (“Nonchalant”) exceeds three minutes, with the rest coming in at an economical, power-packed two minutes-plus.

Lyrically, I think we’ll all have fun with these songs – and I certainly am not making any claims to A) understand all of the words yet, or B) know what they mean – although I get the inkling that some of them are about the after-life, which might explain the title, “Wow To The Deadness,” which starts with these words:

Let it slide to the other side
To the other side
Where the war is over
Let it slide to the other side
To the other side
Where the war is over

I thought I was so much further along
We have a winner
Water seeps through these red flags right or wrong
We have a winner
With every risk comes returning reward
We have a winner
Shadows have light trails connecting the cords
We have a winner

The interjection of “we have a winner” is in keeping with a pure, innocent, trusting view of death (or being in a state of ‘deadness’) being a winning proposition (an attitude that’s actually pretty Biblical according to Phillipians 1:21, where Paul says, “to die is gain.” We have a winner!). Later, in the same song we hear:

It was a battle to bring me around
We have a winner
Suddenly lilies appeared in the ground
We have a winner…

I could be wrong, but it’s a fair guess.

For those who enjoyed Goliath, the songs that sound the most like that album would be “A Muse” and “Nonchalant,” while “Wait Up Downstep” and “Drats” have more of a Danielson feel, although a heavier sound than Daniel Smith normally delivers.

Wow To The Deadness came as a surprise and is a total delight for fans of the more extreme side of both Steve Taylor and Daniel Smith. On songs like “The Dust Patrol,” the combination really cooks – the song starts like a fast-moving electric rock/boogie with a “My Sharona’-like verse sung by Tayler, then abruptly slows down with a bridge sung by Smith along with a sad Mariachi trumpet line, all before ending again in boogie mode. All of this in two minutes.

Wow. We have a winner.

 

Bert Saraco

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