The Columbia Gypsy
JACK KID
Espresso Ecstacy
Self-produced 2001
New Year New England come down
You light up the green in our town
No Currier Ives
Could match your blue eyes
In the wintertime.
The cover of Espresso Ecstacy shows a coffee cup with mail art overlays, a sure tip-off to that the album inside is about a world where people don't sell espresso in the same stand as 49c a pound asparagus from the Yakima Nation. Songwriter Jack Kid uses a wide variety of relaxed American pop-based styles and instruments as a backdrop to his comments on subjects ranging from silly to coldly tragic.
The song that stands out for me is "Lockerbie." Following a boogie song about the flu and a guitar solo called "St. Louis Breaks," Jack uses a driving guitar solo to back lyrics which include "Tattered shreds of childrens lace dangle from the trees..." Matching this track for darkness is "Ghost In the Family," a quietly esoteric song of hereditary guilt over a drowned child quietly backed by guitar and oboe. Prettier is "Dandelion" whose lyrics include, "And I who fought in killing fields was healed with my child's eyes."
These songs are balanced by "Pollyanna Hanna," whose forsaking loves with boys and phones and o's match the bouncy boogie tune. Another down home jazzy item, "Move Washington DC" suggests moving our capital to Lincoln, Nebraska. Most of the time, Jack effectively matches tune and lyrics to arrangement to create a sort of track holism and by the same token variety. He plays the guitar himself, and the acoustic helper instruments include accordion, violin, bass and percussion...and I noticed Billy Novick on pennywhistle, clarinet, and tenor sax.
Would I buy this album? No, because this world is much more subtle and familiar than the one that I want to escape to through music. But I think Espresso Ecstacy is well done and has a lot of inlets for those who want to stay in the world they can see. And the stamp art is an added bonus.
(I didn't know mail art even existed till I got this CD...)
The Columbia Gypsy