Review Summary: Epochal, original work from a great new band.
Catching The Ortolan
In their rush to quickly label this eclectic, intelligent album by a superb new band, not too many critics have pondered the symbolism of the title.
"For centuries, a rite of passage for French gourmets has been the eating of the Ortolan. These tiny birds—captured alive, force-fed then drowned in Armagnac—were roasted whole and eaten that way, bones and all, while the diner draped his head with a linen napkin to preserve the precious aromas and, some believe, to hide from God."
– The Wine Spectator
Grab an innocent songbird and chew it whole, bones and all. Kind of like a record review, don’t ya think?
One critic flipped out because the Deadlies whimsically rotate their MySpace category, from pop to punk to folk to regional Mexican, etc. He assumed they couldn't decide. It's a joke, guy. Reminds me of when The Beatles “White Album” came out. There was such diverse material in that double-header, it messed with some minds.
Still, one look at the crazy videos the band knocked out in their spare time should have tipped them off. Life’s perpetual comedy, black humor, and the obvious foolishness of sliding stuff into one-size-fits-all slots is what they’re all about. Check out "Asian Game Show" if you don't believe me, shot at Camp Deadly, their house in Silver Lake, with a Cantonese speaking host. Label that! (http://youtube.com/watch?v=aJjJNkLWDrM)
This band is real. There are four intelligent, self-deprecating, why-don't-we-take-it-to-the-next-level college graduate artists behind the collaborative cosmos that makes up DeadlyWorld, a place full of revelation, insight, joy, fear, love, death, and chaos. Fate --including Hurricane Katrina, which blew singer/bassist Chris Richard from New Orleans to LA--brought them together, and each is contributing, writing from the heart.
"True story," said Richard, "I was sitting in my house in New Orleans. And there's this hurricane..."
It's been a rocket ride since The Deadly Syndrome played their first show just a year ago, in the appropriately named Unknown Theater in Hollywood. France's top music magazine, Les Inrockuptibles, dubbed them one of their "Brightest Hopes For 2007." They appeared at Austin's fabled South By Southwest festival. They played live on the radio, were written up by the Los Angeles Times and LA Weekly, and signed with globe-trotting DJ Steve Aoki's Dim Mak label. Filter magazine sponsored an August 30 TDS show at the Roxy, as part of their "Revenge of the Sunset Strip" concert series. (http://blog.filter-mag.com/filter/2007/09/filter-tv-the-d.html)
Two are University of California at Santa Barbara alumni. Guitarist Will Etling grew up in Santa Ynez, California. Jessie Hoy, who plays drums, accordion and keys, hails from Templeton, Ca. Film majors Etling and Hoy met at UCSB, playing together in an annual Reel Loud show. After graduation in 2004, Hoy snagged work at MTV, filming Cameron Diaz in Africa, and working post-production on Jackass II. Etling went to work on a master's degree in journalism at USC. They kept in touch.
Meanwhile, Louisiana native Christopher "Crash" Richard, who elegantly handles vocals and bass guitar, landed work in LA as an executive assistant to Johnny Knoxville of "Jackass."
Lacrosse star Mike Hughes, a New York City native who plays keys, drums and xylophone, was in Beverly Hills managing property owned by fellow Brown University alumnus Ben Goldhirsh, the founder of Reason Pictures and Good magazine.
Richard and Hughes were introduced to Hoy and Etling by friends, and The Deadly Syndrome began practicing. Goldhirsh generously offered his guest house as a place to hone their material, on a woodsy five acre parcel in a brush choked canyon. They were pleased when neighbors told them The Animals and Jimi Hendrix had practiced in that very spot. One day, they turned on the TV and were floored to see their canyon burning, but the Beverly Hills fire department quickly doused the flames (no, not with shaken bottles of Dom Perignon.) They all contributed songs and energy, got some gigs, and their work quickly struck a chord with the blogosphere.
"There is a Los Angeles band that has played less than 10 shows in its history. They are great. Already. They will be greater. Any pomp and circumstance or glowing recommendation for The Deadly Syndrome should not be dismissed with a scoff," wrote prescient Sean Moeller of Daytrotter.com, early on.
Radio Free Silver Lake announced, "After seeing The Deadly Syndrome play recently at Spaceland, it’s pretty apparent to me why they’re being considered one of the LA music scene's most promising new acts...Their set’s full of energy, their music – which clocks in at a comfortable place somewhere between Wolf Parade and the Police – is catchy, infectious, and blows away their recorded demo work. They basically just destroy it live."
LA Times columnist Kevin Bronson wrote, "Unbridled euphoria — and wry touches such as onstage cutouts of ghosts — helped the Deadly Syndrome go from zero to signed in a few short months. Well, that and explosive, unaffected songs right out of the Arcade Fire/Modest Mouse/Wolf Parade playbook...The party crowd the quartet has won over is liable to see another side of the Deadly Syndrome when its debut album, "The Ortolan," comes out on Dim Mak Records. It was recorded in a Laurel Canyon house with first-time producers Nico Aglietti and Aaron Older." (Older plays bass and sings for Sugarcult.)
And now it's here. And it's great.
You can’t listen to “This Old Home” without flashing on lonely, wrenching, root-ripping moves in life. “Eucalyptus,” too. Is this a song about growing up and moving on? Or a California pioneer saga? Only one thing is certain: Every lyric is layered in metaphor, with double, triple, quadruple meanings.
And you can't listen to "Emily Paints" without smiling, dancing, or both. The lead solo is killer. "Your lips are close to mine--I'm leaving I'm leaving I'm leaving I'm." Talk about anti-heroes.
"Friends" rocks; "I Release You" is a heartbreaker. Enigma haunts “Creature Creature." “Your body waving like a flag, dragging waves onto the shore…Are you too much trouble? Oh I think you are, the buried treasure the pirates never want to find..."
“Animals Wearing Clothes” is a good example of how an athletic poet can lob your heart into a wood chipper at 50 yards. "It's drinking song," said Christopher Richard.
"This was poorly planned, and executed twice as bad, and now we're swapping stories cross the table. Yeah it's rather sad, that mom would cry when dad got mad, and she locked herself in a burned out house while the wedding bells were ringing out...
"This was poorly wrote, it's a shipwreck, note for note; despite its many flaws, it has you smitten...You're blinded by a verse or two, convinced that they're all about you, but I'm drunk and I'm just sitting, swinging on your front porch singing,
"Keep it to yourself, make your life a living hell, die a little every day, most people die that way, and when it all went wrong, you became a ghost, it's not as hard as you'd suppose, for animals wearing clothes."
And what happens when you become a ghost? It's a pretty cheery proposition, actually:
"I hope I become a ghost,
I hope I can see the end of time,
I hope I become a ghost, and make sure the future turns out fine,
I hope I become a ghost,
Oh when the world is said and done
The stars will become so close
And there will be nowhere that I can't run..."
"Wolves in the Garden" showcases one of the most chilling, breathtaking lines of all time, set to a simple acoustic strum:
"I know I could have saved us, but then we'd never known this day,
If this is where we had to go, I guess I'm glad we went this way.
All that's left to see is, what kind of flowers we'll become,
I'm sure we'll be the kind that bring
children out into the sun..."
"The Ship that Shot Itselef" is titled after a drawing Will Etling did in grade school of pirates whose cannonball returns to strike their ship. The title preserves the misspelling on the original art.
There's more, and remember to TURN IT UP LOUD. Try to get to a live show. As great as these songs are, they are unreal when the guys rock them up on stage. They rip your face off, in a nice way.
T. M. Christian
