CD Review

Melon Collie &the Infinite Sadness, Stadium Arcadium, Use Your Illusion, Michael Jackson’s HIStory – more often than not, the double album is an undertaking in overindulgence. And when that double album arrives in the form of the solo debut from the figurehead of an established band, cue the warning bells. Leave it to Matthew Friedberger to dodge both bullets. He shares his birthplace with Hemingway, but, where the Oak Park author swore by brevity, the songwriter vouches for a sonorous verbosity, crafting couplets to make creative writing teachers cream in their khakis (“September sun and the ablative case / you’re tutoring Timmy by the Finger Lakes” from “The Pennsylvania Rock Oil Company Resignation Letter”). Penetrating detail, story arcs – what Friedberger achieves in three minutes, most novelists cannot scrape up in 300 pages. The Decembrists seem like Dr. Seuss by comparison. Characters including a would-be pimp at a brothel in Cairo and a dissatisfied secretary with a Chinese typewriter populate these dense and literate songs, for which melody is seldom sacrificed. Seafaring saga “Don’t You Remember?” is a close cousin to Fiery Furnaces’ astounding “Here Comes the Summer.” Sister/foil Eleanor is certainly missed but in taking on the twin menace of Solo Album and Double Album, Matthew Friedberger has prevailed.

For more info see: wikipedia.org/wiki/Matthew_Friedberger