THE MISTAKES

If you enjoy early Mike Keneally albums like hat., Sluggo! or Boil That Dust Speck, you'll probably love this album. It is not a pure MK album though, Henry Kaiser adds tons of interesting ideas. Some of the stuff is pretty inaccessible for people not used to Jazz improvisation or atonal Avant-Prog though.

About half of the album tracks are short bits of less than one minute ... I'll just comment on the longer tracks. But these bits are not just interludes ... sometimes they contain motifs which are explored in the longer tracks, sometimes they are funny outtake-like clips.

Put The Bass In The Middle Of My Head: This is a cool improvised track without vocals which dwells on a basic rhythm while bass and the two guitars just go crazy.

Aye-Aye Monster: A pretty normal song ... quite harmonic, with interesting vocal arrangements. It flows nicely and the vibe is reminiscent of bands like Blues Traveller. But during 2 minutes in the middle of this 6 minute song they go freestyle and play around with the song structures in a very "Avant" way.

Island of Lost Luggage: One of my favorite songs on the album, pretty much everything is improvised, based on a single key melody.

Career Politicians: A really weird song. Mike Keneally has a way of creating really odd harmonic "situations" ... there are only so many chords and only 12 different notes, and you would think that most chords have been done many times before, but somehow Keneally manages to create really unique sounding structures.

Transmogrification of Chili (ennui): This song is pretty normal, a rock song with funky guitars, although Keneally's vocals are nearly as weird as in the preceding song.

Warm Papaya: This songs basically consists of pretty cool guitar improvisations which are reminiscent of King Crimson. Drums and Bass are very reduced, one of the few calm and mellow songs on the album.

Waiting on Williams: This is really funny to listen to. Keneally plays some country-rock riffs and varies and twists them a little bit, and the band joins in. The song builds up steadily for about 3 minutes, then MK plays a nice Zappa-esque solo, followed by a solo by Kaiser which is easily on par. After that they play together for a while in a bluesy call-response scheme.

Assembly Language: Another weird song like Career Politicians, very much Keneally. It features a really crazy MK solo.

Sirenita The Greek: This is a short track with many amazing moments ... one of the highlights of the album for me. All the instruments and the vocals just go crazy.

Baby Blues: how cute ... the song begins with some baby voice samples which "sing" blues vocals and are doubled by MK's wah-wah guitar. Then the band joins in, playing a really mellow slow blues. Kaiser plays a blues solo, the baby vocals go on and MK plays variations of them.

The Mistakes vs. Dropped: The longest song on the album - 9 1/2 minutes of improvisation. The song pretty much summarizes the album.