David Torney
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Sci-Fi Elegy
Through "Got to Fly", Marian Call's imagination outdistances Antares. All will bob in the vibe: the exquisite vocals, the music. This CD hails from the (future) days of space colonization: fast forward 500 years from "Wild Wild West". It's out there, like Cat Stevens' "Katmandu", exploring universes parallel to Marian's "Vanilla". Stow your doubts.
The tracks represent a nice mix of genres, featuring space country and blues, to accompany sweet baby Jayne on his journeys to terraformed planets. "I'll Still be a Geek...", with typewriter accompaniment, has a bop for nerds. "Good Old Girl" is an elegy to one's conveyance, regardless of its state of maintenance (like the Millennium Falcon). "Don't Try", a futuristic love song, is like unchained, uncommercial variations on Carole King's "Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow?". "Dark Dark Eyes" is notable for its clarinet accompaniment and proceeds quiescently, like CSNY's "Helpless, Helpless"; River can be cool! "Vera Flew the Coop" contains soaring melodic, wordless choral and vocal parts. "It's Good to Have Jayne on Your Side" is fun and notable for the folk violin. "Into the Black" explores the sentiments of the homebound. There are obsolete apparatuses referred to in "Got to Fly": the telephone and its voice-message machine. (The latter served as telepathic links in paleo-electric times.) This track sporadically features a wee Doppler shift in the backup. "It was Good for You Too" takes jadedness to its limiting form, complete with lounge jazz.
Quantum MechaniX deserves kudos for having the foresight to commission this CD. It is an unexpected rainbow. Aficionados will ride all the waves; for mere mortals, this CD will serve both as a portal to the subtleties of the Serenity/Firefly stories and as a reminder of distant youth, spent, as I did, with cabbage creatures on Mars (fearful of vegan earthlings), or, more likely, in the paths of "Martian Chronicles" -- or in the shadows of the "Twilight Zone".
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