Tufts won’t settle for mediocrity
Thursday April 24, 1997 – 6:00 pmA review of Calling Over Time by Michael Perlmutter that appeared on Tufts Daily Online sometime in April ‘97 (I’m not sure of the exact date).
Edith Frost a disappointing addition to Drag City
‘Calling Over Time’ settles for mediocrity
From its inception, Drag City Records has been on the forefront of the music industry. Where others were too shy or hesitant, Drag City charged ahead, braving new and uncharted waters, discovering sonic exotica every time. Looking back at the seminal first records by Pavement, the adoption of avant-garde superstars Gastr del Sol, the careful cultivation of the latent talents of Bill "Smog" Callahan, the rescuing of Mayo Thompson and the Red Krayola from 1960s obscurity (into 1990s obscurity), and Palace, it seems that the folks at Drag City knew something that no one else did.
But with the release of Edith Frost’s Calling Over Time, it seems that whatever remarkable intuition and foresight the masterminds behind Drag City once had is faltering — or they’re now settling for mediocrity, which is what mostly stands out from this album.
Characterized by a constant imbalance, the songs on Calling Over Time are either lacking in something, or they are just too stuffed with needless extras. The quiet empty space that Frost tries to reveal herself in and weave her songs around is never quite quiet enough, often distastefully crowded with hackneyed country-esque guitar lines, or a voice that speaks more of a karaoke bar than of a recording studio. When Frost’s voice does manage to come across in a convincing manner, the lyrics it carries fall short of giving her lyric-based blues/country/pop any sort of weight.
At least two songs, "Calling Over Time" and "Give Up Your Love," save Calling Over Time from the depths of utter banality and futility. In "Calling Over Time" Frost’s voice takes on angelic dimensions, floating ethereally over gentle guitar strummings. The gentle melody which carries throughout creates the tranquil mantra-like setting, which in other songs comes across only as an annoying drone. "Give Up Your Love" is more playful, with Frost’s voice easing up and down in a repeating pattern, reminiscent of campfire singing rounds.
In both cases, Frost is alone, unaccompanied and uncrowded by needless extremities (even if they are provided by, amongst others, the reputable likes of Gastr del Sol’s David Grubbs and Jim O’Rourke). If Frost wants to strip down and reveal herself, she should learn to remove all but the bare essentials.
April 25th, 2003 at 2:08 am
Calling over Time is one of my 10 favorite albums(and it has been there since I heard it, while other albums have moved on and off that list, sometimes within a matter of weeks or months), and I could hear the title track being covered in many different genres, I think it is that well written.
That was a really harsh review….
M
April 25th, 2003 at 3:05 am
Yeah, the bad ones like this really stick in my craw for years and years afterward. I wonder if these people even realize how much it stings for any artist to read something like that.
Thanks for your rebuttal though, I do appreciate it…
April 27th, 2003 at 8:43 am
As an arts reviewer and now a former Reviews Editor(the ezine I was doing that for has just gone belly up), I can tell you I’ve seen some really awful stuff from members of my profession. Back in college, I swear someone wrote "What the Fuck?!?" as their entire review of a CD…. which I thought was very unprofessional. My task on that university paper was reviewing the stuff no one else wanted to review, every CD that had been sitting in the drawer for months, well, that became my job, and there was some really awful stuff in there, but I was fair, sometimes more than I probably should have been and while giving bad reviews, I’d still try to find something positive to say about them. Sometimes it was really hard to do that.
I always had a problem going for the throat in a review… I mean as a writer, I know how hard the act of creation is, and I appreciate the time and effort spent in making something.
From my fellow uni. paper associates, I found out something important… that they truly believed that when they gave a really caustic review, it was more interesting and was more memorable, so if they didn’t like something, they made it seem like it was horrible, which is a gross misrepresentation….
As a Reviews Editor, I had a good staff of writers who understood balance, and were very professional. Of course, these were novelists reviewing fiction, so they also understood the perspective of those they were reviewing…
M