author: Ken Brown
First off I want to say how F***ing Brilliant and Brash it was for Cush to write words to "Claire de Lune" by Claude Debussy. The fact that it works wonderfully is it's own justification. Now, having gotten that out of my closet let me say that I've left this in my CD player for 3 days now, I almost have the words memorized, for christ's sake, certainly I have memorized some of the same memories that Cush apparently has, these songs would have made a nice soundtrack to the breakup of one of my marriages, or the realizations of my motality, my having lost my chance at fame & fortune or any number of other life altering moments. The rockers rock with the right mix of anger, abandon, and arrogance, but it's the ballads that threw me. The maturity in the lyric writing was unexpected after the assault of the harder edged tunes. The instrumentation on some of the slower songs is also deceptively innovative; yes it's a clarinet or a violin, but the melody line is unusual for that instrument, or the way it's mixed to sound as if it's a distant memory, the production is impressive, and doesn't get in the way of the songs. In a perfect world, or even a half way decent one, this would be on the radio and on the charts (there is a video, but who watches MTV or VH1 anymore, anyway), but in the world I live in, at least, it's in heavy rotation on my CD player.
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