Posted on 06/16/2008
Most of the press blurbs for Don Cavalli’s Cryland make significant mention of the fact that Cavalli is a Frenchman operating in a blues-informed Southern U.S. style. It’s a substantial piece of biographical information that Don Cavalli is French, but that this aspect is always focused in conjunction with his chosen genre hints at a marketing gimmick, along the lines of (though not as extreme as) “Here is a Chassidim who performs reggae.” Regardless of the sincerity of the performer, selling the artist in this way may hope to attract an audience on the basis of novelty, encouraging cultural aspects to color perceptions of the music. Don Cavalli’s album makes many sincere overtures towards blues-rock textures, but this is clearly a modern album and some of those overtures are better thought of as clichés. It is impressive and slightly interesting that someone so seemingly outside of the blues diaspora would be able to successfully suggest and emulate many of its textures, but Cryland falls short of being a particularly powerful or impressive work on its own merits.

The production style of the album is intentionally low-fi. There is little-to-no reverb, making for a close-miked feel, and a lot of distortion ---sometimes created by specific microphone or guitar effects and sometimes through the engineering, as in the many instances of slightly above-level sound peaks. The instrumentation revolves around drums, bend-friendly acoustic picking, fuzzed-out electric guitar, bass, harmonica, and vocals. Altogether, this allows for a kind of manufactured rawness that, while effective, often feels like a self-conscious exercise in style. For the most part the songwriting isn’t unique enough to give the album the kind of core that it needs to transcend the attention-grabbing technical color.

The more interesting moments, it turns out, are when modernity seeps in enough to allow for innovation; “New Hollywood Babylon” is a great example of that. Cryland’s omnipresent fuzzy guitars and distorted drawl are there, but the music is arranged into a strange sort of loop. The lyrics are expressed in a manner not unlike a blues-derived Sprechstimme, but also as though Lee Perry were improvising a recitation on Hollywood movies, glamour, and cowboy-style violence against gangsters, Indians, and foreigners in general. Conceptually, this track takes a very different perspective from the standard topical fare of bewitching women and depression, giving a glimmer of the direction this album might have gone in had the creativity not been too conceptually restrained. Further, the track is so effective it highlights that there is real soul present, but that the artist might need to spread out a little to find its most potent form of expression.

- Justin Deremo