Frank Pahl - "The Romantic Side Of Schizophrenia," FOT Records

Frank Pahl-- "The Romantic Side of Schizophrenia," FOT Records

By Chris Wyrod

      Maybe it has to do with the pollen count or fertilizer run-off in our water supply, but a select harvest of wonderfully wacked music has prospered in the Midwest. Local-yokel Frank Pahl and his Only a Mother cohorts are some of the best current examples of our area's propensity for peculiarity. On his latest semi-solo CD The Romantic Side of Schizophrenia, Frank continues his fictive tradition of music for homemade, augmented, and outmoded instruments. Picking up his "Romantic Side" compositions from his previous CD Cowboy Disciple (with titles like "Romantic Side of Beef"), Frank Pahl has put together a less homemade and more diversified CD in The Romantic Side of Schizophrenia.

      Most of the songs are short enough to dazzle, perplex, and entertain without becoming tired or self-consciously quirky. The characteristic ingredient in most songs, such as the title track, is an off-kilter edginess reminiscent of a slightly deranged circus band tromping through a Felini flick. That is not to say that there is no method to his madness. Once you acclimate your ears to Frank's playful logic, the music makes some sort of schizophrenic sense. While the approach may seem a bit zany, each piece is free of pretension due to a self-parodying humility that is subtly interwoven into the arrangement.

      While most musicians stick to one instrument, not Frank. As a one-man-band of befuddling proportions, Frank strums, blows, and keys an amazingly wide array of instruments. The haunting tone of tunes like "Walnut Street Bridge Dance" stems from Frank's attraction to "folk," non-Western, and forgotten instruments, rousing their musical spirits out of catatonia. On Schizophrenia, Frank adds toy marimba, marxolin, prepared mandolin, and yueh kin to his Cowboy Disciple repertoire of mandolin, guitar, harmonium, euphonium, balalaika, banjo... you get the idea. But, scanning the instrument listing in the liner notes to Schizophrenia doesn't provide an accurate tally of the music, since Frank reinvents the traditions of even the conventional instruments.

      Perhaps what most distinguishes Schizophrenia from Frank's previous output is the accompaniment. Of course his Only a Mother comrades pop up frequently, but Frank's arrangements are also deranged by Shaking Ray Levis on "Hell" (recorded at the Performance Network). The now-defunct student collaboration, the Blue Sun Quintet, accompany Frank on a slow dirge ("Blue") and vivify their mutated string creations on "Creatures." Amy Denio plays sax with a trombone mouthpiece in her duo with Frank, and Eugene Chadbourne rumbas up some pseudo-Cuban music with Only a Mother on "Escabeche."

      Just to make things more delightfully confusing, the CD doses with a piece for fog horns written for a sound symposium in Newfoundland. Clearly Frank Pahl's music is both way behind and far ahead the times. This is music of traditions long forgotten and not yet imagined.

ATLANTIC

THE ATLANTIC GROUP

--read." It's acoustic and refreshing, sounds great, less filling. Filled with wit and rhyme, upbeat and hook-laden, guaranteed to please.

      Another item of interest is a single on the Sub Pop label of, believe it or not, grunge rockers Mudhoney teamed up with country/folk hipster Jimmie Dale Gilmore. They each cover each others' songs and also do their own versions. Then they team up on "Buckskin Stallion Blues." It is fun to hear how these songs are done by artists with such different styles. How did his happen, this odd pairing? I don't know, but maybe someone at some big record label will pick up on the idea and release this type of record instead of all those (mostly boring) tribute albums.