| Electronic keyboards can be very
dangerous things without a budget.
Keyboardist Steve Kouba's Consanguinuity shows a great deal of ingenuity, passion
and potential, mixing pop stylings of artists like Thomas Dolby, Happy Rhodes, John
Mellencamp, Elton John, Madness, Crumbacher-Duke and the Butthole Suffers with his own
brauvara brand of creativity. He's a bold producer with an ear for the colorful, fills his
album with excellent backing musicians, and shows flashes of genuine cleverness in his
songwriting. He's a talent, and One To Watch.
Kouba's originality and potential are easily missed, though, because of his overreliance
on tinnily piping keyboard voices, which threaten to brand the album with the mark of the
sophmoric. Kouba has a taste for the big, dramatic and multi-layered, but he either has
inconsistent taste in keyboard sounds or a limiting armory of low quality gear. The
earnest persistence of Kouba's pluckily overambitious electronic arrangements sometimes
amount to the musical equivalent of a smack-talking midget walking into big bars and
taking on 200-pound bullies with delusional bravery.
The problem may simply be a lack of restraint--a characteristic that pervades some of his
songwriting and vocals. The hyper video game sound effects sometimes emphasize the macho
strutting and primping of his earnest vocals. He's a good singer, and needs only sing to
make that clear.
But overambition is often preferable to underambition, and it's not surprising that Kouba
attracts top-flight backing talent, including Earl Talbot of Poi Dog Pondering
(percussion), and Billy Denny of Trippin' Billies (electric guitar). He's recruited a pair
of guitarists whose solos and atmospheric backdrops are easily the highlight of the
record: Tony Newman and Mike O'Cull (O'Cull's acoustic solo on "Jah Love World"
is particularly good).
There are moments when Kouba's keyboards manage the sort of resonance and originality
keyboards are capable of at their best: the wispy 70s solo that concludes "Tribute to
You," the steady ethereal chords which underscore some terrific meandering guitar
sounds on the bridge of "Resentment Song." There are also moments when he
seamlessly mixes acoustic guitar pop folk into the elaborate synth stuff, as with the
hidden cover of the Beatles' "Norweigan Wood," or "North California,"
which sounds for all the world like an attempt to imitate Boston contemporary folk guru
Ellis Paul.
So what shall Steve Kouba give us, poor as he is? He's obviously given us his heart (to
cheesily paraphrase the Christmas ballad). If his budget continues to keep him from
successfully duplicating the sweeping sounds he hears in his head, he would do well to
give us a little less heart, a little less drama, and a little more maturity and
restraint. That done, there's no reason Kouba's career can't soar. He's perfectly
positioned to capitalize on what is bound to be an escalating fondness for the synth-heavy
sounds of 1980s pop (as more children of the '80s become nostalgic twentysomethings and
wealthy early-thirtysomethings). Consanguiniuity may well be remembered as the
embarrassing juvenilia of an excellent pop artist.
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