Notes
If you have certain preconceptions about the kind of album drummers make, you would be wise to discard them when considering Victor Delorenzo's self-titled solo recording. As founding member of Violent Femmes, DeLorenzo has been anything but an ordinary or conventional percussionist since he was first heard in the vinyl grooves of the seminal folk-punk band's debut in 1983. Among his many musical talents, DeLorenzo is an imaginative singer/songwriter with a flair for cryptic wordplay and groovy chaos. Using the studio as a sonic palette, he paints music in bold strokes that seriously bend the definitions of what is a song and what is an instrumental. One of the most striking features of DeLorenzo's songwriting is the spectrum of influences his musical stylings reveal. A choice cover of the Zombies "I Remember When I Loved Her" sounds like a track from an early Beatles album with it's haunting, minor-chord acoustic guitar and percussion-driven melody. The crazed fun of "Auction Man (Yer on the Air)" sounds like a feverish Captain Beefheart spell, with a saxophone run amok as a ghostly, distorted radio voice is stretched like gauze over these musical contortions. "Bow" uses just drums and multi-tracked voices to create a totally fun groove that would fit right in on a Flaming Lips CD. DeLorenzo's punkier side comes to the fore on the full-on rocker "Gonna Wanna" and Femmes bandmate Gordon Gano sings the trippy lead vocal on the darkly hypnotic and self-help book styled "Dr. Um." And yes, there is plenty for drummers to dig here, too, like the freewheeling solo DeLorenzo plays on "Moving Toward Something." Malachi DeLorenzo (Victor's son) is a frequent co-writer and musical collaborator in this project, which also includes other DeLorenzo kin as well as virtuoso instrumentalists Mike Hoffmann on guitar & bass, Stas Venglevski on accordion and Kim Manning (from the George Clinton funk ensemble) on keyboards and vocals. The blending of male and female voices on many of these songs is masterful, and the engineering talents and provocative production ideas give this record an audible glow that is a joyful mystery to get lost in. Like a good novel, Victor Delorenzo's sublime musical creation journeys you away from the predictable and mundane. All you have to do is come along, and listen. ~ Jim Ohlschmidt.
