Review : The Asylum Street Spankers CD My Favorite Record
Everyone who writes about the Asylum Street Spankers has three jobs. Give a little bit of the history of the band, explain why they can't be classified, and recommend their live shows. In addition, I'm going to recommend their latest CD, My Favorite Record.
The Asylum Street Spankers are an Austin, Texas based accoustic band who perform everything from vaudeville songs to blues to jazz to torch songs. I keep listening and I keep finding that they don't seem to have any limits, not any that they respect. Lead vocal responsibilities rotate between three strong singers with side excursions by another two.
What they don't have is amplification. Any. This is tough for me as a sound man. All the things I can do to make a band sound better than it is, they don't use. They get the job done without it. And their live shows rock. They have tool after tool to pull out to present a great show to a room full of people and they do it all unplugged.
So, given a band that just doesn't do gear and yet still manages to produce a nuanced, exciting show, what's the CD like? My expectations were pretty high. They have a half dozen or so CDs and EPs, including two live CDs. The CDs have been reminders and advertisements for their live shows.
My Favorite Record is that. But it's more than that. It's like a tribute record to music. Fat, low, brassy blues, cynical lyric-driven ballads, a minor key waltz on a musical saw, jazz, rock, blues, country — the whole album is a love song to music. It's an agressive arguement that musicians don't have to be classified, boxed, and filed under some label.
Article comments
1 - Wammo
Awesome review. Thanks. You hit the nail on the head. (Ed. Could you do me a favor and change the spelling of my name and the URL to www.wammolovesme.com? Thanks.)