The difference between chaos and deliberate complexity is not a fine one. The distance between the two can be an acer or more wide, and depending on what you're talking about, the gulf can be infinite in scope. It all depends on the level of intention, foresight, and control exerted over a thing. Relative to the observer though, it might be difficult to decern a difference. And if you get a real drip, they might even read a plan into pandemonium, and vise versa. For instance, the universe is a swirling void of chaos and impenetrable disharmony, sometimes mistaken by idiots for being the product of clockwork engineering. In contrast, the music of the band Birthday Ass is often mistaken as representing total turmoil, when in fact, it is the outcome of a masterfully intricate design. There is no genius guiding the universe, but there is one at the helm of Birthday Ass, and her name is Priya Carlberg.
Head of the Household is Birthday Ass's second album. If you don't know what they sound like, think of Captain Beefheart, but sober, and mean, and also funnier, and replace all the blues parts with wild tempo and tonal shifts biopsied from the canon of American jazz. So how about it? Do you feel like the guy from Scanner's whose head is about to explode like it was blasted in the back by a 12-gauge shotgun? Cool. Here is the part that might make you pop like an egg in the microwave. Remember the metaphor from earlier about Pryia? Yup? Good. Birthday Ass's songs are meticulously drafted before they are played. Those strange, tubular and incongruous shifts you hear about eight times per track. Those are not events born out of improvisation or accident; they're written that way.
Flowing from the master's pen, through the rehearsal room, and into your ear. A fluid, well oiled, rube goldberg of sound, made possible by the talents of a cadre of New England conservatory cognoscente. A cadre whose skills are challenged, by the measure, on these tracks, but whose prowess and perseverance make possible the mockingly whimsical "Blah," the back-alley nightclub mugging of "Plubbage Blubbage," whose outlandishly swiveling melodies are critically superintended to cut you with a switchblade smile, and the deceptively airy "Jello" which wriggles and contorts despite the weighty qualities of its grooves, proving that there are in fact times when sugar and cement do mix, if only in song.
As it turns out, Head of the Household is a self-referential title, and the house this maestro matriarchy commands is the residence of underground jazz itself.
