BURNING INTO THE SPIRIT WORLD - REVIEWS
Muse’s Muse
I remember this band for 2 reasons...
1. The music is like nothing I've heard before.
2. The lead singer is afflicted.
Sophia Jackson has a method of delivery that is like David Bowie's dead wife: an ethereal, alt-pop vocal that languishes between gothic and heavy-hit surf (minus the blues repetition). That makes her as hard to forget as your best Living Dead film, especially when she's floating through new Eastern-spooked tunes like 'Crazy Mary (But I'm Not)', and the witch doctor approved 'Monkey Magic Medicine' which promises more than The Residents ever managed to deliver.
(The 3rd unofficial reason I remember them is that Crazy Mary was a main character in The Thin Man Goes Home, a component of one of the best mystery-comedy series ever. Go rent it. Okay, back to the music.) That first cd I heard was called She Comes in Waves, and it made an impression. Truly unique acts don't come often, but they know where to park.
Some have called Crazy's blend psychedelic, garage, Velvet Underground, Blondie, The Cramps, and the ever-popular alt-rock. Depends on the listener. Myself, I tend to hear an audio Swiss army knife, incredibly varied and spitting in the face of classification. Except that it ain't straight pop. Oh no. How else would they be racking up an AMAZing amount of college radio play from sea to shining sea? With the cd came pages and pages of telling airplay lists from the past several years, a feat I wonder if even our old Beatles are collecting up from today's spastic youth.
Though the lucky 13 songs here are studio grown, a true taste of their live side careens through titles such as 'Dose Me On Up,' a duet with guitar-man Charles Kibel. Nick Raisz likes to keep time like a jazz drummer in clogs, and George Kerezman busies a bass against a 3rd raised voice. Together, the pitch is like odd socks, blue and black together, and to the colorblind like myself you can barely tell who's who.
A few stats: their Astronaut Dubs release has played 360 stations, charting on 27 stations in the top 30. They have been on a couple comp albums, have gigged the hell out of NYC (like Luna Lounge and Acme Underground), and The New York Press calls them 'hip and crazy get down on your knees voodoo dancing.'
Crazy Mary is like that Wonderful Brown Sauce you see entrusted to Chinese menus. You're not sure what the hell's in it, but it's a singularly strange, exotic and at times full moon taste that's hard to take a doggie bag on. You wanna turn to the next track and finish it all in one place.
Hybrid Magazine
All indications from the primitive cover would have you preparing your boda bag for the next desert tribal festival. And if you read my last CM review (and I know I did) you'll be expecting to throw this out with all the useless 12 inch double extendo dance space remixes. Well, my 60's psychedelic garage surfing minion, luckily for you, and me, and Crazy Mary, this here's the real deal. They were just screwing around with all that astronaut crap, trying to throw us off their scent. The fantastic bass lines I was talking about are so much better when the other instruments are in agreement with them. Yes, Sophia Jackson still occasionally sings off-key, but in the context of a true and actual song, it's endearing.
On "The Rain In Memphis" she breaks her stiffness for a distorted chorus from a lonely pay phone. Charles Kibel's fuzzy guitar follows her story, instead of leaving her alone in the rain. And sweet, welcome tunefulness on my beloved bass thanks to George Kerezman. It's full of energy and purpose that matches the angry walk in a nighttime storm. "Voices Of Freedom" is a little more stoic and hymn-like with its rich organ and anthemic tone. Kerezman affirms this with folk-singer backing vocals. Meanwhile, I am again reminded of Flaming lips by weird, wormy synthesizer making sure the song is not taken too seriously. Seriously cool, however, comes in "Monkey Magic Medicine." Electric sitar (now obligatory) and know-it-all arrangement make it a fun and sinister opium den full of trenchcoats. It follows a "Love Potion #9" theme all the way to Cairo.
Namesake "Crazy Mary" is dark outsider folk in a Nick Cave vein. Slow, plodding and creepy, the vulnerable Mary is nuts in a sympathetic manner. "My friends all say my mind is on vacation. Paranoid delusions I have got. The doctor says I must take medication. My friends all say I'm crazy, but I'm not." Each clever verse drags with anticipation, waiting on edge to discover what lies around the next corner. The surf guitars echo throughout while the slow eastern arrangement coils and rattles when it reaches bottom. "Freak Out" is great mind-altered surf a la Breakfast With Amy. Sounds like Peter Fonda fronting The Trashmen. And just because I haven't mentioned him doesn't mean Nick Raisz is a slouch on the drums. He rolls and crashes like the tides. This time, the imbedded dub noises work.
The lowercase X styling of "Dose Me On Up" are staccato beats and bisexual vocals without the Exene dissonance. Crispy drums and crunchy guitar hail from a bygone post-punk era. Jackson circus tents on every other line of the chorus and brings it down for Kibel to catch her on the return. The 2 chorded story flips in similar fashion, "It brings me down, tosses me round. It's dragging my ass to the wrong end of town." Kerezman's spooky, distorted delivery is backed by warbling Hammond and clean bluesy guitar on the ultra-cool "It Calls Your Name." Some of these foreboding fables are in a Squirrel Dub Zipsters bent. It's hard to tell if the narrator's pointed finger is warning or threatening. Springy surfabilly guitar with plenty of wah wah adds a back-alley backdrop.
The hippie-folk dreamscape of "Confusion Reigns" is sentimental and pretty. But for me also pretty boring. Kerzeman and Jackson's stunned vocals plow the same row until she throws an occasional seed. "Moon Song" on the other hand is prettier and ends too soon. Kibel plays lovely tropical acoustic tones and Jackson croons sweetly over the soothing bass. Then some self-abusive barnyard fun that would make The Hickoids proud. "Chicken" features slide guitar, harmonica and a lot of Ween silliness, "Choke your chicken now. Let me show you how. Grab that chicken 'round the neck. Shake it like a nervous wreck." "Astral Telepathy" sounds like wind chimes while watching the stars. Spacey, but still retains the idea that it's taking you somewhere. They allow for a lot of depth and lift out of it with angelic builds. And if that didn't doesn't get Jack Horkheimer's telescope extended, "Voyage To Uranus" sure will. Actually, it just has an oscillating synthesizer. The rest is pretty straight instrumental which only slightly resembles the Hitchhiker's Guide theme without the banjo. The Pentecostal hoe down "Dance With Snakes" is an altar call to that most holy sacrament, "Born in the backwoods of Georgia, by and by. Falling in trances shaking on down in the name of God." As Moe the bartender once said, "I was born a snake handler, I'll die a snake handler."
I think they send out the EP so expectations will be low for the album. Then they hit you with all this fun stuff and you're floored. But Crazy Mary, I'm warning you, these songs are your children (or 116 cats). Don't leave them stripped and exposed like that again or I'll turn your asses in.
On a surfer scale one being Gidget and ten being The Big Kahuna: Burning Into The Spirit World rates an eight, Moon Doggie
Old Punk’s Web Zine
Yes, more indie garage dub beatnik psychedelic folk from NYC. More fun stuff from harmless eccentrics with day jobs and a good publicist. The materials in the press kit compare Crazy Mary to Pylon, The B-52's and The Mekons. I can see it but there's nothing earth shattering about Crazy Mary. They write some great songs and a bunch of decent ones. 15 years ago they would have fit comfortably on Hoboken's Coyote Records. Today they're a bit of an anachronism with a great set list of songs to dance to at various small clubs in the NY area.
I like this CD very much, and there's a lot of good material on it…
"Voices Of Freedom" is or should be the single from this CD. Something tells me their live shows must be a treat, with everyone dancing and enjoying themselves immensely. Visit www.crazymary.com to download their live video.
Mr. Lee.com
Burning Into the Spirit World – Stripped down, guitar/bass/drums art rock from New York City that paints a wild musical collage of post-indie pop with new boho female vocals, a splash of middle eastern surf and way cool cover art!
Cosmik Debris
Burning Into The Spirit World is the fourth release from Crazy Mary, and fans of the band's quirky psychedelia will be comforted to know that time hasn't tamed the quartet's adventurous spirit… you'll start hearing about them even if there isn't an ultra-hip college radio station in your neighborhood. Meanwhile, they may be hanging out in a musical ghetto of their own making, but they're among the most talented people on the block. Hope to see them out of the 'hood next time around.
All Music Guide
The band's fourth album offers more of the type of appealing, oddball pop that peppered Crazy Mary's first three releases and that understandably endeared it to the college radio crowd, with whom its willful disregard for musical boundaries could best be appreciated. Burning Into the Spirit World may, in fact, be the combo's most charming album to date, and perhaps its most out-there as well. With such singular visions as vaguely hippie-ish worldbeat excursions (the Rusted Root-but-grittier "The Rain in Memphis"), the reggae-tinged ("Moon Song"), kind-of zydeco ("Dancin' with Snakes"), and a spy theme crossed with raga rock (the funky, creeping "Monkey Magic Medicine"), it may take a bit of ear stretching before you find your way into the Crazy Mary orbit. But once there, you may find yourself entranced. And spacey is a description that certainly applies to the album. The album's finest song, "Confusion Reigns," hearkens back to swirling '60s psychedelia, while "Astral Telepathy" constructs a skeletal, otherworldly universe out of phased drums and a xylophone-like gamelan. And any band that is willing to take on Frank Zappa, as Crazy Mary does on "Freak Out," just by virtue of its song title, is worth investigating. The zonked-out surf rock of the song confirms it. Sophia Jackson's unsteady vocalizing just makes you root for her and these songs all the more. More often than not, the rooting is repaid.
THEGLOBALMUSE.COM
Crazy Mary is a band that is about as off the wall as you can get without being considered completely weird. Their music style is a psychedelic lo-fi punk style that has many quirky feelings and harmonies. The music is definitely interesting, though it does border on the strange side of music. The vocals are shared between both male and female singers. The vocals are nothing to get up in arms about, but do fit the music very well. Both albums have the same sort of imaginative lyrical styles and musical flavoring. Burning in the Spirit World has more of a matured sound and style. The songs on this album show a more seasoned and experienced band. I enjoyed the music on this album a lot more because it was more of a modern pop style that still possessed that lo-fi punk feeling. Sophia Jackson took the mic a little more on this album, but the harmonies that where present on the first album where still there. Over all, these albums had a lot of great qualities. The musical style may not be for everyone, but to those who like a little something different, Crazy Mary is right on the mark.
NEFARIOUSMAG.COM
I reviewed three CD's from Crazy Mary & I loved all of them!! Their music is simple yet lively and their lyrics, even though not very intellectual, are energetic and catchy.
Their song "Chicken" (from the "Burning into the Spirit World" CD) is a prime example. It's a song that's totally about chicken...from eating it to choking it. This song, with it's wild lyrics and sweet beat, made me laugh and learn the words as fast as I could. If you want an album that speaks to you, you should check this one out. If you were to put rock, country, punk, acoustic & folk into a blender, this is what you'd get. I think that my favorite CD was "Burning into the Spirit World" but the others are definitely worth a listen.
If you like music that is different from the mainstream, and you have a good sense of humor, then definitely check out this group.
SPLENDID E-ZINE
Crazy Mary's fourth release is their best effort to date -- it's tighter and the production is better. Sophia seems to have grown as a vocalist; while her voice never lacked character, she's far stronger in terms of emoting, volume and even range. Perhaps she's just using her voice in different ways. Whatever the reason, the change is a plus. The band's style is psychedelic/surf/punk voodoo rock, but certain tracks clearly favor one genre over others. Burning Into the Spirit World is much more surf-ish, and summery, than previous albums; perhaps the band was dreaming of summer during this winter's recording. Burning should be a favorite for driving down highways this season, and on into the future.
Muse’s Muse
There's a certain groove that defines a scene, that earmarks a sound. The Motown sound was a smoothed out version of the gospel/rhythm 'n' blues hybrid known as soul. This music featured wailing singers anchored by a tight rhythm section, playing a snappy, optimistic beat that defined the hope of the sixty's Civil Rights Movement. Punk rock - when it first came out in the seventies and early eighties - had the sound of in-your-face, raw power, aesthetic, of chaos and creation, with an emphasis on both the return to rock basics and rock's anything goes creative nihilism. The psychedelic sound? Now that's much harder to pin down. It is many things to many people: a lick played relentlessly, with thick, sonic tsunamis swirling over, under, around and through the music; or a freaked out hippy-folkie singing about love and drugs; the hard-nosed rock sound from the industrial heartland of Detroit and Ann Arbor, Michigan, with its "hippie = nigger" politics and acid washed intensity. Then again, I always found Hendrix's otherworldly music, long before any weed or psychedelics passed 'tween these here lips, to be truly mind expanding, transporting me to a world away from AM radio and Woodward All Boys School. Patti Smith was my lizard king, my LSD shaman. I was always tripped out when I saw her. Then, of course, there is '90's psychedelic rock, which brings back and incorporates any and all of the above elements. Like Crazy Mary does on their "Burning into the Spirit World" CD.
Crazy Mary has continued in the direction of their last record, doing what I called 21st Century Pop. And whereas the pop songs were more pop and the rock more raw on the last record, "She Comes In Waves," this time out it, however, their music is more codified, has a more unified and confident sound. As suggested by the title, this album is more psychedelic. This is in part because female singer Sophia Jackson has more of a presence, singing lead or duo vocals on every song, many of which lean toward trippy languor in feeling and lyrics, like a Haight-Ashbury band circa 1967or Boston's Bubble Puppy. It is also because of the unabashed, yet non indulgent, musicianship of the band. On the pop side is the lovely Jackson tune "Moon Song." The guitar hook is awesome, as is the guitar call and response with her sweet wordless vocals. Showing a Ringo Star-like ability to play the right shit at the right time, drummer Raisz plays a melodic drum beat of soft rolling tom toms and deft rim shots, to give the song a gentle propulsion that, along with the singsong vocal melody and "chop sticks" bass line, takes us on a dreamy pop roller coaster ride. Nancy Sinatra had a number one hit with this song in an alternate universe. Even Frank liked it.
"Astral Telepathy" is a fresh take on the tripped out, San Francisco style of Grace Slick with the Jefferson Airplane. Her ethereal vocals transport us over the LSD trip hop dub of the band. Charles Kibel 's writing is at its zenith on this cut. Jackson's voice is the perfect vehicle for this trip: "I want to fly through the atmosphere, I want to fly through the air/ we go down to your hometown." The lyrics float, with an ethereal melody over a sparse, droning bass line, occasional disembodied snare and glockenspiel, and glissando guitars, creating a song so sparse, you want to call the Ghostbusters. Talk about putting words to music.
"Voyage to Uranus" reprises another element of classic psychedelic music. The jam. The Grateful Dead turned this into a joke, albeit one that transforms those kids at the shows. The Jefferson Airplane album "After Bathing at Banters" had a killer psychedelic jazz/blues rock out number. Crazy Mary - which I think of sometimes as JA's born-to-a- groupie-mom offspring - does a similar thing here, reinventing the classic psychedelic sound, making it sound organic and sincere. Charles Kibel gets to rock with an Ecstacy drenched, acid blues guitar. Nick Raisz drum beat captures the feel of the garage-surf beat and his shakers add a groovy richness to it all. How come producers hardly us percussion in rock anymore? It's crude, perhaps, but effective.
"Confusion Reigns" is perhaps the only modern song that captures the rising feel and sound of true, sixty's psychedelic rock. It is a blend of blues, rock and folk. It has visionary lyrics, saturated with colors and metaphor, that straddle the line between silliness and zen-like truth: "I surf the water where confusion reigns, I climb the mountains of eternity." Musically, it has the tremolo guitar intro and throughout, the easy drums, the droning bass groove, and the sixties "now sound" power arrangement. But the true magic of this song is in the pop harmonies. I've heretofore never heard these type of harmonies outside of old Turtles records. The lyrics capture the psychedelic experience: "Look down the valley of your mind to peer into you soul Am I alive or am I just living? / Awaken from the dream of life the sense that it now hauntingly colors my mind like a chute de jour (?)/ You may think you've been here before but you have never left is it the end or is this the beginning? " The final touch is the vocalized "Oh oooohhhh Oh" at the end of the chorus. This is an example of the simplistic genius of sixties pop and psychedelia: an obvious, non ironic, possibly silly little thing that perfectly captures the feeling of everyday joy and ascendence, chemically assisted or otherwise.
Another aspect of psychedelic rock is the acid-blues, Led Zeppelin style rocker. With its heavy backbeat, and blues-like, nonsense vocals ( "Chicken, eat your chicken"), it's an example of the childlike aspects of the garage-rock end of the psychedelic spectrum. I liked the silly rock lyrics of the songs on their first album, which revived this aspect of classic pop and rock and roll. This record keeps up this Crazy Mary tradition with songs like "Monkey Magic Medicine," "Crazy Mary," "Dose Me Up," and "Freak Out." While the lyrics aren't deep, have happy-go-lucky madness as a theme, they are fun, with a touch of semi-serious angst (Dose. . .), and the playing, singing and arranging stays varied enough from song to song to avoid boredom. Another song in this realm is the CD closer "Dancin' With Snakes," which is a joyous, hillbilly blues rocker, with a nice harmonica riff via Kibel, and lyrics about a snake handling Pentecost: "Dancin' with Snakes/ Dancin' around/ dance on down in the name of god. Born of in the backwoods of Georgia . . . dancin' with snakes my whole life/ Drinkin' down poison/ drinkin' it down in the name of god."A good upbeat number with that Crazy Mary bow to the absurd and mundane, yet surreal, world we're livin' in. Crazy Mary reminds us that it's truly amazing what talent and cleverness can accomplish.
And don't forget kids, check out their groovy website. This record gets three and a half tabs out of four.
ROCKPILE
Crazy Mary has been a mystical East Coast frat favorite for a couple of years now, but lead singer Sophia Jackson’s voice is mired in the west coast of the ‘60’s. Although a number of the songs have a meaty, almost swamp-rock hook- such as "Freak Out", "Chicken" and "Dose Me On Up"- listening to her Woodstock-era stylings seems to actually date this fresh offering, though not in a particularly harmful way starting off. "Voices of Freedom" and "Moon Song" are good blueprints, with a light, poppy, "Love Not War" feel running throughout. Guitarist Charles Kibel, when not singing back-up or taking the occasional lead, adds a few good licks, producing a much fuller effect…this is a strong album throughout.
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