| Check out the following incomplete list of
instruments from the liner notes of local singer-songwriter Zach Duenow's debut CD:
Guitar. Harmonica. Turntables. Wurlitzer. Clav. Screams. Dial tones. Cow bells. Baritone
sax. Horn. Birds. The Highland Park Trash Can Orchestra. Even when his lyrics get a mite
thematically thin and his songwriting gets a little too radiopop-familiar -- which doesn't
happen often -- this kind of incessantly shape-shifting set of sonic tools ensures that
things never get boring. This is an impressive debut.
Zach Duenow, who on his debut CD doffs his first
name and goes mono-nominal (perhaps in recognition of the band that backs him on this
album), is known for playing solo acoustic sets with naught but his wife on drums for
accompaniment. But the real achievement of this snazzily packaged debut recording is the
uncanny ear he and his co-producers demonstrate for the assimilation of a wild and woolly
array of different sounds.
The promising young Duenow, who should by all
rights have gobs of time to mature further, has evolved from writing catchy,
self-consciously hip acoustic pop songs in the general mold of a Jason Mraz to helming
this surprisingly eclectic and notably Beck-esque disc's worth of mixing and sampling.
This album captures highlights of all sorts of stages in that evolution.
Lyrically, his songs repeatedly vent the
apparently long-repressed vexations of middle-to-high school alienation. While he hasn't
yet achieved sufficient success to rate an official "parental advisory" sticker
from the RIAA, his brand of ebulliently uncensored college dorm humor would certainly win
him one.
The album opens by introducing the album's
mysterious but presumably anti-establishment title lyric ("If You Could Only See What
They Are Doing To You"), sung by a digitally simulated monk-like chorus atop an
alluringly atmospheric sort of pan-African instrumental bed. (This brief opener also
introduces a series of eight instrumental interludes which will punctuate the album's ten
pop songs.)
Then track two ties Duenow's anti-institutional
bent to his youthful discontents, kicking in with an impressively performed bit of rap
acting entitled "Six Packs" that tells (in wince-evokingly graphic terms) a
rhymed and ribald tale of childhood rebellion against a chronically depressed and
apparently alcoholic mother.
This track's palette of rebellious poetic
imagery includes "pissing Listerine," Vanilla extract abuse, self-mutilation and
violent vegetarianism born of belief in reincarnation. Then the record gives way to other
evocations of unhappy youth, including harmonically altered sound clips of a
stereotypically nasty gym teacher boorishly officiating the sadistic ritual of
"shirts vs. skins." Duenow's persistent fascination with the travails of youth
is sometimes rendered with cleverness ("Love is plenty and classes are great / They
charge me to sleep at an hourly rate," he sings on the horn-kissed, Beck-bitten
"But," one of the album's most infectious tunes), though at other times, his
songs are coated more thickly with a certain notion of "cool" than with
genuinely honest self-revelation or insight.
Outside of the rapid-fire first-person (but --
for Zach's sake -- hopefully fictional) autobiography of "Six Packs," Duenow's
strongest and most vivid writing is actually in his lively press kit bio, which details
his personal evolution from mohawk-wearing, Christian death-listening teen slacker to
suit-wearing corporate ad agent. The latter stage of Duenow's life ended with a "a
moment of psychosis during a focus group in which we were testing a new dessert macaroni
and cheese," leading him to place a letter of resignation on 800 desks, take off for
Costa Rica and commit to songwriting rather than be committed.
This colorful tale, however much of the lily it
gilds, deserves at least one more album full of songs all to itself. The record rarely
touches on the specifics of the story. Still, it's full of its influence, most often in
terms of Duenow's resultant philosophy of self-actualization.
Duenow and his small army of co-producers (Danny
Shaffer, Derek Lurie, Scott Steiner and Dave Hutten) package his promising if perhaps
still-inchoate songcraft in painstakingly intricate home and studio sessions. While he
waited for his producers' and his band's schedules to open up, the songwriter decorated
the songs himself on his own via what he's called his favorite method of production: his
own home laptop. These sessions pay off nowhere better than on the instrumentals, many of
which rank easily among the album's highlights. They range from susurrous DJ Shadow-like
turntablism to a try-as-one-might, hard-to-resist ragtime swing piece named for a certain
area of female anatomy.
It's also hard not to look forward with optimism
to Duenow's maturation from his thematic and aesthetic obsession with the juvenile. As
bountiful a display of creativity as this deserves confidence for the future, in Duenow
and his co-producers. Already the industry outside Chicago has had the chance to check out
Duenow (whose possibly ironic declaration of the intent to "f--- the living dollar
out of everyone" -- recorded by ubiquitous local indie producer Steve Albini -- might
incidentally be one of this town's most blunt odes to the pursuit of mammon since Liz
Phair smirked "It's nice to be liked / But it's better by far to get paid").
Last summer he became a finalist in an Internet contest for a spot opening for Jewel, and
earned a gig playing the Tweeter Center's VIP Room before a recent Peter Gabriel concert.
The slickly mixed sound collection, and the
similarly polished and idea-dense cover art and liner notes (designed by Duenow himself,
to his significant aesthetic credit, even despite an oddly creepy cover photo from the
University of Texas Robert Runyon collection) make this one the more impressive total
packages I've covered at ChicagoGigs.com in the last 12 months.
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