Album Notes

SPLENDED E-ZINE SAYS:

Milo's medication isn't working. It says so right on the CD. Oh, wait, that's a song title, not part of Milo the bio. Never mind.Anyway, whatever drugs Milo is taking, he should keep it up.

Smell the Parade is one of the most enjoyably weird listening experiences I've had in ages. This lo-fi songwriter's album is original, yet rife with references.

Musically, Milo flits from hitting on the Death by Chocolate girl ("Minimalist") to trying on hair-metal spandex ("Mirko's Car"), to trading sordid memories with Willie Nelson ("Open Mind Open Sores") to making faces at the Magnetic Fields ("New Panties").

Milo's voice and accompaniment are perfectly adequate, but what you really want to hear about on this disc are the lyrics, which are extremely sophisticated in an expectation-busting kind of way.

For instance, "Roach Under Glass" is exactly what it sounds like -- a song about a captured bug. Yet somehow, it turns into a hymn to universal love. Milo explains, "I toss him from the glass. He tumbles in the grass. Goes round to the shrine. Lord Buddha. His light shines."

Similarly "Pen Pals in Prison" sounds like it might be a Johnny Cash song, but the prisoner, we find, is a woman incarcerated for check bouncing. "Pen pals in prison. They're a captive audience," we are told by a singer who sounds a lot like Jonathan Richman. "They only want to be forgiven for a felonious offense."

Smell the Parade is a David Lynch movie of an album, too odd to take entirely seriously, yet too perceptive in spots to laugh off as a joke. I hope we hear more from Milo -- and that whatever he's taking continues to fail to rein him in.

By Jennifer Kelly / SPLENDID E-ZINE / May 21, 2002

(All songs written and performed by Milo Ippolito. Copyright 2002.)