Thrill Jockey showman continues to display both an impressive wit and a ceaseless dedication to his musical craft.

Around the time of his 1998 album Rise Up! Bobby Conn discussed his musical goals with the print zine Puncture. Paul McCartney's 'Live and Let Die' inspired him, especially how each section was it's own thing-- first it's a piano ballad, then there's a little reggae section in the bridge. He hoped that one day his own catalog might serve as a complete history of Western pop in miniature, with every possible subgenre covered in at least part of one track.

Bobby Conn King For A Day Rarity 2017

King for a Day is a great rock and roll record that is clever without being cloying. It is certainly one of Conn's best efforts and thus far one of the most enjoyable releases of the new year! It is certainly one of Conn's best efforts and thus far one of the most enjoyable releases of the new year! Bobby conn king for a day rarlab winrar. Buero fuer zeiterfassung und zugangskontrolle. Berkeley process control. Ics america interactive circuits and systems. Richard w pecina. Industrial sensors. Schmitt- hofmann. Ag engraving plus. William waitzman. Gn battery depot. Industrial products.

You have to take everything a trickster like Conn says to an interviewer with a grain of salt, of course, but three full-lengths, a live album, and some EPs later, he's certainly covered a tremendous amount of ground. Conn's albums tend to orbit around a single theme lyrically-- wealth and success on Golden Age, the politics of fear in The Homeland-- but musically they usually jump from glam rock sleaze to show music pomp to pseudo-confessional singer/songwriter tenderness to classic rock boogie to soulful r&b croon, often within a single song.

If Conn's bombastic turns and stylistic ping-ponging sounded daring and unusual in the late 1990s, when prog was lying dormant and Jim Steinman's name was still spoken through clenched teeth, it now seems perfectly normal. In this post-Fiery Furnaces age we expect our quirky and ambitious indie pop artists to play around with genre. So Conn's newest, King for a Day, is as restless as you'd expect, which makes it easier to enjoy as an album. Setting aside the element of surprise, we're left with a dozen widely varying songs about celebrity, ego, and the distorting effects of show business.

While he approaches his subject with a typically smug edge befitting his over-the-top 'showman' persona, Conn also cuts that quality with impressive wit and a ceaseless dedication to musical craft. This is a very big sounding record, sharply arranged for Conn's band the Glass Gypsies and assorted guests. The eight-minute opener 'Vanitas' begins with a clear acoustic guitar pattern and vaguely Middle Eastern violin from Monica Boubou, but after some chanting the electric guitars kick in and all of a sudden everything is all rock'n'roll animal. The crunch continues as a phalanx of layered voices conjure images of King Arthur on Ice-levels of excess-- did I mention that the lyrics are in Latin? The first English we hear form Conn is the words 'I feel old-fashioned when we fuck in the dark' on 'When the Money's Gone', which follows the glorious opener without a pause. So we know he's still got a dirty mind and, with the song's bouncy melody and bumping little guitar riff, that he's still writing some catchy songs.

Having spent his entire career thinking in concept album terms, Conn is by now a master of structure and pacing, as he weaves conventional songs that run the gamut with instrumentals (the marching and proggy 'A Glimpse of Paradise') and spoken-word goofs ('Punch the Sky', which seems to riff on Scientology). The falsetto-voiced 'Twenty One' alludes to Philly-soul's proto-disco, while 'Love Let Me Down' is jaunty, swinging baroque pop-- my wife walked in on the chorus and thought it might be Belle & Sebastian.

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King for a Day ranks with Rise Up! as Conn's best. Still, as good as the record sounds and as capably as he immerses himself in assorted flavors pop, there remains an odd sense of distance to Conn on record. Between his persona, his themes, the piles of instruments, and the thick arrangements, Conn's music is deliberately structured without a discernible center. There's nothing easy to grab onto. Which, viewed another way, is a strength. There seems little chance that Conn's music will ossify; his perpetual reinvention and undeniable talent suggest that he'll continue to make compelling records as long as the format still interests him. But for all their charms, his records are made for either quick infatuation or distant admiration; King for a Day is classic Conn, because it's hard to fall in love with.