House of Freaks -- Cakewalk

(Giant 24417)

For their major label debut, Richmond’s House of Freaks -- singer/multi-instrumentalist Bryan Harvey and singer/percussionist Johnny Hott -- worked like a team of documentary filmmakers, carefully and creatively assembling aural bits and pieces of their daily lives, their musical noodlings and full-fledged inspirations. The result is Cakewalk, an engaging compendium of audio verite that breathes melodic truth while revealing the duo’s lovable, left-of-center edges.

In-studio chatter, production noises and quirky instrumental intros and outros make up the clever mortar binding the Freaks’ diverse guitar-based material. Irresistable pop-rock songs featuring shiny vocal harmonies and bubbling / chiming percussion, like vibrant disc-openers "Rocking Chair" and "I Got Happy," share space with darker outings like the melancholic "My House," colored with Hott’s baleful vocals.

The most breathtaking pieces on Cakewalk are those embracing a rustic instrumentation typically neglected in current popular music. "Ants" is a frantic diatribe memorably punctuated with loud, booming tom-toms. The Delta-inspired "Magpie Wing," recorded on the porch of Hott’s farmhouse, sounds gloriously years behind its time with Harvey strumming a battered acoustic guitar and Hott adding simple percussive sounds.

The album-closing "Remember Me Well" uses clarinet and oompah-ing trombone to evoke the homespun heartache of a sentimental funeral march.

With its truthful tenor and wistful nod to the past, Cakewalk is a delightfully candid, hauntingly personal effort.

--- Sue (Smallwood) Van Hecke / Catharsis #22 - Nov. 1991