“I’m a real band!”
When you write about an artist a billion times, sometimes your head goes to strange places -- leading to references that probably only make sense inside your own head. With Par For The Curse, the third album from the Todd Congelliere founded project, Clown Sounds has evolved from solo origins to a collaborative effort. The results are clear when you listen to. No disrespect to previous Clown Sounds in the slightest, just that this is a little more diverse in sound and the instrumentation feels a little more complex and layered. This probably won’t surprise anybody who has followed Congelliere’s work in the past (Toys That Kill, FYP, Recess Records): the band members are familiar faces -- members of both aforementioned bands, plus The Arrivals and Killer Dreamer. Like all his bands, it has a lot in common with other bands, but it also doesn’t. If you need a reference point in his catalog, though, take the two previous Clown Sounds with a bit of a focus on the groove. Then take a tab of acid.
I’m going to broadly summarize Clown Sounds as being a band of deceptive simplicity. The songs feel very straight forward with predictable song structures and movements but, when you listen closer, there’s a ton of nuance. The melodies are so pleasing to the ear that you don’t pick up on those details on first listen, you just go with the flow. But when you pull up your chair a little closer and fully tune into your headphones you get slices of pretty much every style of music to influence modern day rock ‘n’ roll. There are obvious moments of course, like the psyched-out and bluesy “Chicken on the Lamb” or the reggae-tinged “Beyond Control.” Every time I hear the intro to “The Landing Pad” I think of Naked Raygun guitars, but it quickly turns to the more familiar key and later gets some chuggy ‘70s guitar tones. It’s all over the place, but with a firm foundation built on singalong melodies. “Cut It Off,” “Primetime Recount,” and the titular track are classic, guitar punchy-pop like you’d expect (with a few weird sound effects added). It doesn’t feel like a side project at all. It’s fully formed and potent.
Congelliere’s lyrics have always been on the abstract side. That continues here, using open-to-interpretation phrases that build and compliment a bigger mood. While being serious about the music, it never takes itself seriously, if that makes sense. There are a lot of winks and nods. And the studio outtakes and clips that prelude songs add to the levity before the catchy tunes take hold again. Sometimes when you review a band like this there’s a tendency to say “it sounds like I’d expected” and leave it at that. But Par For The Curse isn’t stagnant or a stack of 11 tunes that are interchangeable with the rest of the musicians’ catalog. There is real growth and direction here. I like each of Clown Sounds’ three records incrementally more. There’s a little more fire power on this one with the full band, and it nicely compliments the band’s experimental side while still belonging in the same universe as the other bands named in this review.
