nellie mckay

A Week With Nellie McKay's "Pretty Little Head": Day 3

21 January 2007
tell your friends... tell your friends...

Words by Tony Conte // Illustration by Amanda Walker

Do me a favor — omit the basic elements of songwriting (verses, choruses, a discernable beat, lyrics which don’t read like a William Burroughs junkie mash-up), record that mess in a foreign country (preferably a lesser-known town in Germany or eastern Europe), and only release it abroad, thus making it difficult to get a copy in the U.S. Now try to convince me that that album isn’t being praised by some of our more finicky (read elitist) music journalists as “genius” or “challenging, yet rewarding.” That’s been my experience with “experimental” albums. Nellie McKay’s album is gorgeous, quirky, accessible, and even in its more confused moments — it’s warm. It is all of this, and still it is nothing if not an experimental album.

“There You Are In Me” is a pensive ballad with a piano melody that wanders in the opposite direction of Nellie’s pointed vocals. The two travel like thick pieces of yarn being braided, crissing-crossing yet never travelling in tandem, never purely parallel. The words assuredly insist that she has given up seeing any glass as half-full, the lyrics tell us that Nellie has learned to live a life of quiet resignation to this world, rife with disappointment from so many loves lost. Nellie gives us words which try so desperately to convince.

“Every single thing/Will only bring/Another sad solution/Every single hurt/Will only curse /Another substitution.”

But her understated vocals don’t agree. When her voice goes percussive, in what you could loosely consider a chorus, you know it’s her rampant anger that is gripping the heart of this song in a tense fist. And as the ballad gone-awry builds force and one vocal layer swallows the next in a carnival mirror, cackling delight, her lyrics begin to take the same risks that the music has already broached:

“Shellfish/Cupid/So delirious/Leave me nuff alone/Uptight/Upright/Long nights furious/Darwin asks/You got the money?”

And this is just one song.

So what’s so experimental about the rest of the album, you ask? To explain, I’ll need one more favor — Grab a hefty dose of caberet music, yeah, the kind from the 1930’s(make sure you get the lightest and fluffiest or this won’t work). Now drop it in the pot. Take that sinister looking can of hip-hop beats out of the fridge, crack it open like the cheap imitation of Colt 45 that it is. Pour a cup of that cheap brew into the pot. Next add two tablespoons of bachelor pad lounge, a teaspoon of a once-immature artist that’s been carefully aged over the past three years to maintain its cheddar-sharp bite, but without the soft spot for easy melodies. Now mix it up real good, even though you know it’s not gonna mix right. Then take it to the oven…naw, screw the oven. This one you’ll have to bake it in a kiln, not some weak-ass, Sears-bought, kitchen appliance, because all of those ingredients ain’t never gonna gel unless you add some real heat to it.

Now be patient. Give the concoction some time to settle. Now take it out and somehow, you’ve baked us both a hearty two-disc meal chock full of stories told by a woman who at times purrs, growls, and screams like a banshee.

The only way to enjoy this culinary delight, my courageous cook, is to take it in nice and slow. Chew every bite. Savor it. It’s rare. A treat.

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Here’s a Nellie McKay playlist, along with some music recommendations:
http://www.seeqpod.com/music/?plid=f3368513d95bd0df0f599037337438df7385fa6c

Emma | 22 January 2007
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LOVED this review! I’m going now to check this artist out on itunes.

Dana | 27 January 2007

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