Album Notes

Jonah Rank's latest concoction, Your Favorite Album, like his debut CD, Loud and Dumb, is not only breaking the limitations of aural perception, but it is also breaking people's ear drums. Yet under the sneering, there is an artistry. This album of entirely improvised music is seeks meaning.

From the refined and rocking church organ on top of "Mount Sermon" to a comfortable landing at a piano solo "Beyond Green Hills", Your Favorite Album takes the listener through a world of wild sonic experimentation. Descending "Mount Sermon", Your Favorite Album crosses the border into "East Carolina On the West" as Jonah's banjo slaps its audience right onto the short but funky bass of "The Electric Couch." The listener need not get up though; the drumming "Dental Breakdown" shoots into perspective the nearly classical treat of "No Hindsight In Reach (No Lessons Taught)". Before there's anytime to reflect on the violin solo, Jonah's chromonica tells us that it is neither the blues nor classical: "Blue and Green (No Time)". After one non-blues comes a different kind of blues: namely, the "Ancient Near Eastern Holiday Blues" on Jonah's shofar. Exhausting a quickly contracting universe of possibilities in non-Western music, Your Favorite Album picks the listener back up and places it by the fuzzy bass of "The Electric Fuzzy Couch", all geared up for the interjectional drums of "Yeah Yeah Yeah (Rock)". The wild times calm down though, and "Scenes From a First Grade Classroom" appears with a high wooden recorder - with its new instrument and timbre to descend in the rising of age - all the way through "Scenes From a Second Grade Classroom", "Scenes From a Third Grade Classroom", and "Scenes From a Fourth Grade Classroom". The wooden recorders' blasts from the past are blasted even further as the listen is brought to the pizzicato picking of Jonah's violin in "17th Century Blues" only to be recognized by the slow sounds of jazz chords on an electric guitar reminding us that, after this much of the journey, we are all "Still Lost". After some reflection, Jonah's trumpet gets confused and finds itself "Getting an F On a Breath Alcohol Test". In a continuing search, an acoustic guitar investigates "On The New Paint" only to leave all too soon: "Beyond Green Hills".

Whether or not listeners see Your Favorite Album as necessarily commercial, they will see something in the album that is exclusively their own journey: perhaps even their Favorite.