Rare is the musical group that can both amuse and frighten you at the same time. Case in point: The Princes of Serendip and their nutty youtube video, "The 7 Deadly Plastics". This horrifying tune, which can be found on their sophomore CD, is a lengthy ode to those curious little numbers on the bottoms of your plastic food containers. Performing what sounds like a whimsical children's tune (in their distinctively upbeat folk/celtic/classical style), the Princes rag on plastics right down to the 90,000th one: "It makes your fat cells its long term home / And it reaches in your ovary and tweaks a chromosome." The songs on What She Said span multiple millennia of story telling, from the burial musings of an ancient Sumerian princess ("My silver comb will succumb to the acid secretions of my decomposing body" from the title track) to the modern day toxic horrors that will stick around for the next million years ("Plutonium POPS"). Though the CD case is environmentally friendly, the disc is still made from polycarbonate... whatcha gonna do? Kudos to Don Yacullo (piano), Julie Parisi Kirby (vocals), and T. G. Vanini (vocals/violin) for informing and entertaining simultaneously. 

--Sharon Nichols, Chronogram magazine
                            Read more...