This one is a trip.

I first encountered Charlie McAlister opening up for the Mountain Goats at a show in Charleston, South Carolina. John Darnielle went on throughout the show saying how happy he was that he got the normally reclusive McAlister to play first. McAlister’s band was a junk fidelity, cowpunky kind of thing that seemed like it would churn Irwin Chusid’s butter if you get my drift.

This CDR, packaged in a DVD case, features spoken word pieces by McAlister overdubbed with electronics and violin by Eric Ostrowski (noggin/king frog). There are 19 tracks of this stuff at under 19 minutes, so you never get bogged down. McAlister’s vocal ramblings go from poetry, weird stories that wouldn’t be out of place as a narration in a Harmony Korine film, weird dada-esque language pieces.
Ostrowski’s accompaniment, which was overdubbed two years after the initial recording of the vocal pieces, gets noisy, but not overwhelming, staying playful with the spoken word pieces. On some tracks, Ostrowski plays his violin like a ukulele, making some tracks feel especially demented.

Part of me wonders if the kid from Human Skab would grow up to do this kind of music. 8/10 -- Andrew Murdock Livingston (28 April, 2010)