SHE COMES IN WAVES - REVIEWS
Cosmik Debris Magazine:
Crazy Mary is a NYC based quintet that's grabbed considerable attention on the college radio front with a pair of indie releases. Last year's She Comes In Waves is a fine representation of what they do.
What they do is a fin de siecle style of psychedelia that carries hints of influences including the Velvet Underground, Blondie and the Cramps. Add the band's own somewhat quirky outlook and classic DIY production values and you've got instant college radio classics. A leap to the next step, if they want to take it, will probably require rethinking those production values a bit, but if they're happy with how they're doing, they have an audience that's clearly happy with how they're doing it.
Aiding & Abetting:
A wonderfully inventive and eclectic (you might think I’m using that word too much, but I’m not) band. Crazy Mary simply refuses to stick to any one particular style. Well, unless you want to say the band is reminiscent of the Mekons. That would be fair.
And a high compliment, as regular readers will note. Crazy Mary expresses lots of strange ideas in even more unconventional fashion. And yet, it’s still rock and roll. From Venus perhaps, or Mars, but the roots can be spotted.
With two principal songwriters, three singers (two male-the writers-and one female) the comparisons to the troupe-formerly-hailing-from-Leeds increase. The real trick to making this sort of music convincing is evoking a sence of vulnerability and fragility, as if we are seeing inside the collective heart of the band.
Crazy Mary offers itself up on the alter of rock and roll. Personally, I’ve drawn my knife. I’m ready for more.
MusicZone:
Um. Uh okay. There are 12 songs on this 40-something minute cd. 5 people are entirely responsible for what you hear. That’s all I should say.
But pressing on. I’m listening to Cancer on the Photograph. It’s weird like bongwater. It’s odd, within a rock and pop setting. That’s the whole CD, not just this song. I’ve never heard "we’re all gonna die" exclaimed with more happiness than in "Shot By Bullets" I don’t know if I should take them seriously or tear my hair out and run through the NYC streets naked, waving something rude. I do believe either action would be perfectly reasonable after a session with Crazy Mary.
I say all of that in pseudo jest you know, because they are tearing up college charts all over the place, being played out of tons of speakers. Influencing our younger generation to thinking about things differently, to de-popping the mainstream radio dials, and getting a new genre heard and loved throughout New York state (at the very least).
If you’ve not heard them, you’ve not heard anything like them. I suggest you gear up, take your last gulp of Air Supply, and GO OVER THE TOP.
Music Dish - 1/29/01
From the slightly cliched, post-Pixies grunge psychedelia of "Burned," the CD opener, through the garage scorchers of "Shock Me" and "City's On Fire," this record does what most pop music, especially rap and metal, constantly fails to do: keeps the listener pleasantly surprised and eschews beating one dead ass horse for some variety. Rather than call this retro, garage, or 90's psychedelia, I'm calling this music 21st Century Pop. This is going to be the new music movement of this decade. Rock-type musicians will, like their forefathers in the 60's, take what they know, they've heard, and feel like playing, and meld into their own style. This may include sharp departures from song to song and album to album. Record labels and their publicity arm, major music magazines, not to mention the average dim-witted, dumbed down consumer, will initially be confused, resentful and disdainful. But they'll get over it. And they'll be glad.
"Burned" is followed by "Cancer on a Photograph," a pop song that, with the invention of time travel, will be covered by the Velvet Underground (with Nico). It has the same sweet, time-out-from-drugs sensibility of "I'm Sticking to You." The male-female dual vocals of Charles Kibel and Sophia Jackson is used to great effect here, reminding one of yer daddy's psychedelic favorites The Great Society(with a young, hottie named Grace Slick, and X. Next up is "Shot By Bullets," with it's slow hard rockin', Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers groove, and vocals that remind one of Jonathan Richmond. I love the lyrics: "Thanks to DNA, Russian children will sing 'God Save the Csar' . . . they were shot by bullets, punctured by bayonets, torn like favorite photographs, all left to die." How many rock tunes talk about the Russian Revolution and cloning in a 2:51 pop song? This illustrates another of the band's strengths and is a nod to rock's past: a simple tune with a complex, yet off-the-wall, perspective. This is also found in the song "Paris (1944)." It's gentle music, with Hammond organ and a drummer playing (gasp!) brushes, provides a raw and delicate background for a song that jumps from the "end of war" Paris to lyrics that suggest reincarnation or death bed visions of "the children cried, when David Bowie died." I'm not sure which is it is; hell, it could be both. Or more. And that's the point, for crissake, to have the listener add his own experience to the mix.
"Consider", in contrast to the previous tunes, is a simple love song, sung by the sweet voice of Ms. Jackson: "I consider you smiling with your hair down, your thoughts in a desperate place/ I didn't mean to call you baby, you've got such a baby's face/ we were contemplating sculptures of legends, poets and Santa . . .if I could have your head on my shoulder, I could wait for a wonderful dream." Beautiful stuff.
So far this record has given us psychedelic pop, post-punk rock ("She Comes in Waves") and hard rock. What next? "No Resistance" is new wave rock that makes you want to get in a car and drive. This tune has the band's signature wah-wah guitar leads and hard syncopation in the rhythm section. My favorite song, the Detroit style rock and roller "Shock Me" is more of that rock silliness, with lyrics about a gleeful man demanding shock treatment. What is rock if not silliness and absurdity? These are lost arts. These are elements of what Socrates called Dionysian art, something Plato and society, both then and now, don't like. Rock silliness got his ass killed. "Calender Green" brings back 60's style inventive rock, with awesomely tasty, intensely mellow drumming by Nick Raisz. Dig that weird drum beat, and accents and rolls. What, What?! The chorus, with Ms. Jackson's ethereal voice, takes you back to listening to Syd Barret in a dorm room, smoking out of a 4 foot bong and feeling the blotter come on slowly. Or is it just me?
"City's on Fire" brings in socially conscious lyrics: "City's on Fire, city's in flames/ black and white/ it's not the same/ injustice system that's a game." The loose rock feel, and blues explosion guitar army jam over the stop/start bass riff by George Kerezman, provide another back to the future moment. Remember when bands besides Rage Against the Machine cared about the world around them? And Crazy Mary didn't make a whole album or set of albums in this mode, like Rage. Just a song. Maybe I'm naive about rock and roll's past, but it was a good thing when artists put out records with a variety of sentiments, thoughts, and sounds. In other words, it's good when a band has mad skillz and something to say. Like the final song "A Little Faith" with it's country gospel shtick, at once funny and sincere, says: "It's so hard to say goodbye. . . to watch you die. . . not to cry Pick my self up off the floor, don't feel sorrow anymore, walk on through the open door/ Life goes on through passing time/ I may be down, but I'm doin' fine, make the best of an uphill climb/If you just have a little faith and friend to help you through/ your dreams can come true." Isn't it ironic? This is another of those excellent records that glide under the radar of commercial notice. Seek it out, dear reader. See their web site www.crazymary.net. Please
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