Unique local side project presents a two-song album
An artist here in town, one I have a great deal of respect for and have written about on more than once occasion, hit me up the other day and said he had a new project he wanted to share with me. I listened, loved it, decided to write it up, but there was a caveat. This project had to be kept entirely separate from his other work.
Plenty of artists have multiple bands, multiple projects or multiple personas, and sometimes it’s okay for that artist to be recognized in each incarnation (Les Claypool, for instance.) Other times, though, anonymity is necessary, like the kid who plays in the church band on Sunday and has a makeup-wearing, pentagram-having, Satan-hailing death metal band the rest of the week. It’s just better for business if never the twain meet.
I get it, completely, and will of course respect the artist’s wishes, but this presents me with a downside in that I can’t really discuss the new music in terms of how it expands upon the old.
So, for our purposes here today, Burly Temple is a completely independent artist in no way affiliated with any other performer in the area, although he does share a propensity for fiendishly clever lyric writing with another fellow I consider to be one of the very best songwriters I’ve ever heard, bar none.
The new album Icarus features just two songs, “The Ballad of Bill Bailey: The Making of Chinese Democracy and the Unmaking of Axl Rose” and “The Chris Anderson Trilogy.” Yes, I referred to two songs as an album, but consider that each tune chimes in just a little bit past the 17 minute mark and there’s no denying, if this were on vinyl, it would be two whole sides comprising one whole album.
As a rule, I’m not a huge fan of songs that are 17 minutes long, but in this case I’ll happily make an exception because, again, this guy’s lyrical chops are second to none. Not only is his wordplay rapid-fire funny and intelligent, the larger points he makes are valid, and extremely well thought out.
The first song’s subject matter is pretty self-explanatory but his handling of the material, the rise and fall of a certain group from the late eighties, is so simultaneously hilarious and yet spot-on, it’s great fun to listen to whether you ever cared about that certain group or not.
The second tune (“The Chris Anderson Trilogy”) carries the gravitas of this two song set. Dealing with some very local politics, the tune yet again manages to combine some wicked humor with genuine, sincere insight.
Any clown can make a person laugh, but it takes an artist of a high degree to simultaneously make you laugh and think, while delivering observations with such acuity that I’m starting to think of this guy as the musical version of Jonathan Swift or H.L. Mencken.
He’s just that good and there is no reason to take my word for it, you can hear these tow marvelous little ditties for free at the Burly Temple Bandcamp page.