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Avg: 4.0 (54 ratings)
- Date Released: September 25, 2007
- Genre: Rock/Pop
- Style: Pop
- Label: DIST / Welk Music Group
Pop's sardonic iconoclast returns with her best album to date.
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We Say...
Nellie McKay’s new album starts off with laughter — loud, hard laughter, the kind that at first sounds like a good time, until you it dawns on you that, hmmm, maybe whatever these people are laughing at isn’t all that funny. And, of course, a sweetly played song that acidly comments on feminist-haters isn’t funny. That contradiction, which gets you laughing and thinking, thinking and laughing, is what makes Nellie McKay so winning. The confidence with which McKay deploys her prodigious talent makes Obligatory Villagers her best album yet — and one of the best albums of the year.
On her previous two albums, 2004’s Get Away from Me and 2006’s Pretty Little Head, McKay reveled in the tension between lyrics that make biting critiques of the messed-up world we live in and music that hopscotched among the styles of yesteryear: big band, the great jazz songbooks, classic show tunes. Her one nod to modern music was when she rapped on tracks like Get Away's “Sari.” But even then, she subverted the genre, rhyming not about what a superior person she is but about the frustrations of living in a society with questionable values. To paraphrase Sinatra, she ate it up ("it" being popular culture) and spat it out: “Well now, I don’t mean to offend/ Much/ Just comprehend/ When you’re female and you’re fenced in/ And Fen-phen'd to no end.” Those records were heavily praised for their ingenuity and wit — and rightly so — but at times they were a challenging listen. There was so much going on musically that playing these albums straight through felt like flying through McKay’s mind, dodging the synapses as they zipped by.
Obligatory Villagers, on the other hand, is as creatively voracious as McKay’s past efforts but hangs together wonderfully. Her old-fashioned influences are still there, so it's not so much an aesthetic development as McKay simply firming up her approach. “Overture” opens with some brisk trumpet playing, like a number from a Gene Kelly musical. “Politan” is a swaying bossa nova featuring summer-breeze vocals by Nancy Reed and some craggy crooning by Bob Dorough, both of them veteran jazz artists (although Dorough is perhaps best know for Schoolhouse Rock). “Zombie” is a 21st-century “Monster Mash.” But the songs are streamlined and sure, and the lyrics are more clever than ever. “Identity Theft” uses that indignant “Sari”-style rapping to race through a litany of complaints about everything from assimilation to Ivy League schools to Pluto’s demotion from planethood. Witness the kooky wordplay: “Lookin for some kind of closure/ All I’m findin is Ray Bolger.”
Upon the release of her first album, Nellie McKay was hailed as the cat’s meow (even if that cat did hiss at times). But we all know what often happens to the shining faces in those “Ones to Watch” features. With Obligatory Villagers, McKay proves she’s got legs, and she knows how to use them. -
They Say...
The irony inherent in Obligatory Villagers, the shortest of Nellie McKay's first three albums, is that it's her most difficult to understand, comprehend, or even take in. This despite the fact that, unlike her first two albums, these nine songs don't sprawl stylistically. Except for a light pop opener -- granted, that opener is a mocking satire of conservatives called "Mother of Pearl" with an opening line ("Feminists don't have a sense of humor") that deftly counterbalances McKay's later call for a dance break -- the album is Broadway all the way. With McKay's voice and piano, plus heavyweight help from jazz horns including David Liebman, Phil Woods, and Bob Dorough (the latter a singing horn), the album charges by with lightning speed. Her nimble Broadway orchestrations step and kick so quickly that it's nearly impossible to decode McKay's lyrics until after several listens -- even keeping up with the lyric book is difficult. (On his features, Dorough plays it up perfectly, a bemused and befuddled onlooker to the madness.) The fact that Obligatory Villagers does eventually coalesce into a unified and pleasurable listening experience is primarily a testament to Nellie McKay's sizable skills in arrangement and orchestration; writing original charts to provide the meat, then quoting from show tune tradition where she needs to lighten the mood, she makes the entire album a treat, an entertaining experience that listeners will want to sit through over and over until they figure out all of the points -- large and small -- she's making in these songs. If only there were a Broadway musical companion for Obligatory Villagers that listeners could actually sit through, either to visually unite the songs or merely to watch while they listened, Obligatory Villagers would be an amazing soundtrack.
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You Say...
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| 01. |  |
Mother of Pearl |
2:10 |  |
| 02. | |
Oversure |
3:20 | |
| 03. | |
Gin Rummy |
2:58 | |
| 04. |
Livin |
0:23 | |
|
| 05. | |
Identity Theft |
3:27 | |
| 06. | |
Galleon |
3:21 | |
| 07. | |
Politan |
4:18 | |
| 08. | |
Testify |
5:40 | |
| 09. | |
Zombie |
5:56 | |
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Credits
- Bob Dorough - Vocals // Bob Dorough - Assistant // Bob Dorough - Copyist // Jim Daniels - Tuba // Jim Daniels - Trombone (Bass) // Kent Heckman - Engineer // Nelson Hill - Clarinet // Nelson Hill - Flute // Nelson Hill - Sax (Alto) // Nelson Hill - Sax (Tenor) // David Liebman - Sax (Soprano) // David Liebman - Sax (Soprano) // David Liebman - Sax (Soprano) // David Liebman - Sax (Soprano) // David Liebman - Sax (Soprano) // David Liebman - Sax (Soprano) // David Liebman - Sax (Tenor) // David Liebman - Sax (Tenor) // David Liebman - Sax (Tenor) // David Liebman - Sax (Tenor) // David Liebman - Sax (Tenor) // David Liebman - Sax (Tenor) // Phil Woods - Sax (Alto) // Phil Woods - Sax (Alto) // Phil Woods - Sax (Alto) // Phil Woods - Sax (Alto) // Phil Woods - Sax (Alto) // Phil Woods - Sax (Alto) // Phil Woods - Sax (Alto) // Marsha Cahn - Assistant // Paul Rostock - Bass // Paul Rostock - Assistant // Marko Marcinko - Drums // Marko Marcinko - Assistant // Eric Doney - Accordion // Eric Doney - Assistant // Jack Young - Assistant // Vicki Doney - Vocals // Vicki Doney - Assistant // Nancy Reed - Vocals // Nellie McKay - Organ // Nellie McKay - Piano // Nellie McKay - Arranger // Nellie McKay - Chimes // Nellie McKay - Glockenspiel // Nellie McKay - Gong // Nellie McKay - Ukulele // Nellie McKay - Vocals // Nellie McKay - Xylophone // Nellie McKay - Producer // Nellie McKay - Tympani [Timpani] // Nellie McKay - Orchestration // Nellie McKay - Wurlitzer // Amy T. Zielinski - Photography // Robin Pappas - Producer // Tom Hamilton - Sax (Baritone)
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