Poem Review: "Laryngitis" by Philip Dacey

Dacey's poem "Laryngitis" or "losing your voice" in layman's terms, failed to surprise. The opening line, in addition to stretching long enough to visually stick out, begins the poem with a flop. On first read, the lines seem disjointed from sentence to sentence: there are police, a square, a union, and then an afterlife and a dead brother: each metaphor repeats the loss of voice in what might fairly be called "redundancy."

Perhaps most engaging, the line "For a change, listen!" hardly does the work of a therapist working with men who can't shut up. That Dacey admits in a previous line to being "guilty" of "littering" (ie guilty of saying nothing of value, or even "talking trash") is hardly a serious enough metaphorical offense for the audio "space" men tend to take up. For a poem about the transformative value of losing his voice, there is little to convince the change was wondrous enough to warrant deep spiritual interest.

The ending tries to get at the core of the poem, but develops little more than we already knew. It's as if to say, "I used to talk too much, but then I lost my voice for a hot minute and now I'm totally cool. Let me tell you about how cool my experience was."

If this poem has a strong point, perhaps it's in the immediate accessiblity. Truly, there must be good arguments for this poem's merits. It *was* published not once but twice.

Above all, what is least of this poem is that Dacey, co-editor of the fantastic anthology Strong Measures (Harper & Row 1986) and author of eleven books of poetry failed to deliver this reader to the happy threshold of a good poem. Surely he's produced many fine works. This one didn't work for me.

Music Review: Nite Jewel: Good Evening [2008]

Feist meets 80's electo jazz funk, Ramona Gonzalez aka Nite Jewel  takes me back to a time when laser beams and satellite dishes were the apex of technology. The audible landscape is modern, but not current. It is immediately urban, synthetic, and optimistically curious.

Good Evening succeeds in it's use of dated sounds coupled with Gonzalez' soothing, spacey vocals. Your friends might not realize it's contemporary music when you throw it into your mix at a get together.

There's a range of tempo and rhythm on this album, though the overall theme is driven by recycled sounds of previous decades:

Gonzalez vocals are spacey, similar to Debbie Harry on the iconic track, "Heart of Glass." That voice, coupled with the upbeat bass driven and synth riffed "Let's Go" delivers all the satisfaction of the disco floor with the sophistication of a fashion polyglot.

The instrumental breaks in "Heart Won't Start" are nostalgic and pop oriented, relying more on a rhythmic hook than originality or complexity.

With all the notable sounds, this album could easily have been a disaster, but it isn't.

Music Review: Emily Reo: Minha Gatinha [Sept. 2009]

A full length lo-fi album driven by static repetitious vocals keyboards and drum beats, "Minha Gatinha" will lull you into unawares as you surf the web. Reo's distant and distorted vocals resist recognition, much like listening to someone sing in a large, tiled shower. The music will encourage you to sit and drift in your own thoughts or add a whimsical element to a work environment.

Reminiscent of Broadcast, early Mirah and even classic 50's, there's a sense of innocence and purposeful foolishness in the experimental pursuit of identity. However, Reo departs from those who have used similar sounds in her eerie, mystical, and enchanting deliveries and arrangements.

Often, a simple rhythm delivers a supremely natural aesthetic as in "Tidal Mouth," where the keys recall both ghostly synth and also xylophone. At other times, the lo-fi pop sound is negated, or at least less polished. The raw, ghostly sound of songs like "Stronger Swimmer" denies as much beauty as it demonstrates.

This is an album that can draw in an audience, perhaps largely because of the intensely personal/voyeuristic nature of her sound. I'm looking forward to future work, which I hope will develop Reo's full potential vocally and in terms of arrangment.