Andy Kaulkin
Six Foot Seven and Rising
Bongload Records
Release Date: 1996
Andy Kaulkin sounds like he heads up the house band at a bar so cool that you're never, ever going to find it. Like most bar bands, his music is rock-n-roll. But rock-n-roll -- brash, swaggering, bluesy but unabashedly tuneful -- isn't exactly what you would expect from someone with Kaulkin's bicoastal musical breeding. His East Coast childhood was spent soaking up the hardcore scene in his Washington, D.C. birthplace, but these days he makes his home out West working as a marketing exec for Los Angeles' Epitaph Records.
Despite all that, Kaulkin's Six Foot Seven & Rising may make its most lasting musical mark as a monumument to the state of rock 'n' roll
circa 1996. His performance credentials are mostly as a blues piano player, working most frequently as a sideman for the Mighty Flyers. In an
age when you have to be post-punk, or at least punk, to be cool, Kaulkin resurrects raucous, messily melodic rock and reclaims the whole
range of emotional expression it can convey. That in itself is a hell of an accomplishment.
Take "City in Pain," the album's leadoff track -- hardly your standard verse-chorus-verse rocker, considering the avant-garde meanderings
of baritone sax, bullhorn vocals and piano. But the calypso-like piano part that dominates the opening riff melts into a bluesy chorus, Kaulkin's
half-spoken vocals punctuated by funky saxophone snippits. By the end, the once-disparate sounds have converged with all the force and
momentum that a more traditional rock band musters.
Kaulkin follows up with "Who Ya Gonna Blame," a gutsy straight-ahead screamer that is saved from pop irrelevence by a few well-placed
twists. For one, there's Kaulkin's quirky vocal phrasings, for another, drummer Steve Mugallian's stray beats that elevate the rhythm to
something worth listening to by itself. But in the end, subtleties don't mean a damn. What sets this song apart is raw emotion, sly irony and
the unshakable sense that the singer isn't bullshitting you.
Six Foot Seven & Rising is most successful when it stays in a similarly raucous vein. The drunken rant of "Die, Die Trouble," with its
menacing storytelling style, uses Kaulkin's own piano work to propel a pissed-off sing-along. "Do You Feel Lucky" is awfully close at times to
rehashing a Rolling Stones song, but ultimately saves itself by its consistent refusal to go for the easy hook, always stopping one step short
of the cliched chord that would tempt a lesser musician.
Kaulkin's slower songs have less direction, and a few can't quite hold your attention until the end -- at least not when held side-by-side with
his best tunes. Kaulkin isn't accustomed to his role as a frontman, and admits that he made the record mostly to go through the process of a
solo project. Sometimes that attitude manifests itself in a certain lack of focus. His experiments with stride piano, country rock, and deep,
sultry sax parts come up with their share of hits, but also a couple of meanering misses. In the end, what distinguishes Kaulkin is the new life
he breathes into hard-driving rock-n-roll.
-- Chris Schwartz
schwartz@outersound.com
