Written by: Dave Cantrell
Since its much debated inception – was it Woody Guthrie’s Dust Bowl Ballads released in 1940; Sinatra’s In the Wee Small Hours; Zappa and the Mothers Freak Out (1966) or was it really, as most purport, Tommy by the Who, even though the (historically way overlooked) S.F. Sorrow from The Pretty Things beat that colossus to the punch a full year earlier? – the “concept album,” definitionally challenged as it inevitably is, has over the decades acquired a checkered reputation that runs the predictable gamut from indisputably brilliant (we’ll go with Quadrophenia as our example) to, well, less than that (a few too many to mention so, umm…), but the one quality it’s never lacked is a level of devoted ambition that can’t help but reflect a level of intense dedication that few artists have the sufficient energy and self-belief to pursue and it’s by that metric alone As You Heard Me, the latest release from Hoboken-based husband/wife duo The Cucumbers, ranks among the most genuinely fulfilling records we’ve encountered for some time. As to the ‘why?,’ well, as is said, let us count the ways.
Just about as much as any contributing factor to the pull this work exerts on the listener is the album’s semi-meta grounding in the confoundingly messy proposition of the music-making milieu itself. As premises go for such a piece it can’t help but strike us as both potentially messy due the rabbit’s hole nature of it (ie surely the artist is too close to the subject to do it objective justice) and the thereby subsequent danger of it all coming out as perhaps a wee bit too precious. As such concerns go, however, consider them dashed from the off. This album – essentially a short story in musical form that follows the tale of an aspiring young music publisher hunting down a renowned but reclusive songwriter brought to life (in both chapbook/novella and audio form¹) by the Cuke duo Deena Shoshkes and Jon Fried – is nothing if not deft in its overall craft which in itself is a convincing indication that any such concerns are, in this case anyway, a bit daft. Which in itself is due (no surprise) to the quality of the songs themselves, which in turn (stating the obvious) make or break any album of course but are especially crucial to carrying a narrative outing like this, to which we can but say “Pffft! No worries there, dear reader.” In other words, as an album-based work of fiction goes, As You Heard Me rocks. And sways. And grooves and, most importantly, engages throughout. To wit (as they say):
The damn near illegally catchy opener “There’s a Crop Circle on My Daddy’s Land” sets the album’s template, corraling one’s attention as it does with a bewitching combination of the straightforward and the craftily capricious, brimming with a storyteller’s inherent brio set against an arrangement that couldn’t more assuredly charm one’s boots off, cowboy or otherwise. It is, in short, a natural which, as the rest of the record tends to prove, these here Cucumbers have, yes, a natural knack for.
Whether it’s the laconic but somehow mesmerizing “Waiting (Impressions of Chrysanthemums)” that, equally ‘somehow’ wrapped this listener in an odd mix of comfort and loneliness, the utterly irresistible “Cut It Loose” that, truly, if it doesn’t have you movin’ snake-like to its bass-borne groove (even if you’re sitting down) then, well, I dunno, call your doctor or somethin’, or “You Are the Sweetest Dream”‘s easiest-going of hooks that’ll have you securely in its clutches before the second stanza, there’s little chance that, even as you’re just a third of the way through the tracklist, you won’t recognize that you’re in the presence of some damn fine pop wonderment.
As a ferinstance, the taut fragility of ‘Side A’ closer “Statue of Liberty (the tracks are presented on the back of the CD as a cassette label with handwritten titles under the headings “As You Heard Me” – side A – and “More Songs For Barry” – side B) that sneaks through its three-minute-and-change duration like some adroit thief tiptoeing across your head and leaving a pinpoint mark every step of the way. Or the finger-snapping bossa novaesque jounce of “Reeling Feeling” that amounts to a concise swing through that odd marvelous giddiness of being in love. Or the poignant melacholic drift of “River of Time” that not only undoes any doubts about this lot’s range it bloody presents itself as a set piece in that regard. Or the haunting lost love-ness of “You Won’t Even Miss Me When I’m Gone” that pretty much shimmers with hurt and is thus, of course, an album highlight among many and then there’s the altogether loving “Forever and Ever” that closes this gem on a note that buoys the spirit as if prescribed for that very effect and thereby stands as a much-needed panacea of sorts against the plague of ills we all open our phones to every morning and that my dear reader friend, could not more point to the gliding essentiality of hearing this record in this moment.
Above all else, perhaps, the most accurate overarching attribute once could slap on the side of this band’s van is ‘exceedingly capable,’ which is decidedly not meant to ‘damn with faint praise’ but rather underscore with no little emphasis how adept The Cucumbers are at tackling the gist of a song no matter what genre’d direction it takes them. Thus, to some extent, it’s a dead easy cinch to recommend this album simply due its ambition, an ambition that has that sneaky, brilliant werewithal to not necessarily feel like ambition. Rather, the sixteen story-related tracks herein all share a DNA that may as well stand for ‘Decidedly Not Ambitious-sounding,’ a conundrum of sorts that points to that most charming of assets: an implicitly naturalistic – which is to say ‘a damned fine’ – and gratifying listen. In short? A purely sui generis gem of an album.
1 – The physical book (which is to say novella) is available separately via the album’s Bandcamp link while the ebook version comes bundled with the download on that same platform. There is also a Kindle version of the book available via Amazon
