Smart Went Crazy
Con Art
Dischord, 3819 Beecher Street NW, Washington DC 20007, smartwentcrazy@hotmail.com
Release Date: November 3, 1997
Tossing a few unusual instruments into the lineup can be a nice way to spice up a rock and roll ensemble. Problem is, once most bands venture into wind, bow or brass land, those tools become the whole focus. Once they had a name, but now they're just known as "that band with the violin dude."
Who knows what the kids from Smart Went Crazy had in mind when they decided to start a rock band with a cellist. And if you take the time to listen to Con Art, you won't much care.
Hilary Soldati's cello is thickly lacquered on every song, but it's so natural -- more birthmark than the usual tattoo. And if the word 'orchestration' is floating around your head, you couldn't be more off. In Soldati's hands, a bow is a screeching noisemaker ("tijuana 3/28/96"), or a melodic anchor ("funny as in funny ha-ha"), or weaving drone ("song of the dodo"), or, well, you get the picture.
So, if Soldati's versatile cello is so tightly integrated into Smart Went Crazy's sound, why am I blabbering about how distinct it is? In a lesser band, these individual performances may be too distinctive to take their places in the crowd. But each member of Smart Went Crazy knows something else: how to blend strong flavors into a sharp but drinkable cocktail.
Chad Clark's lyrics are terrifically clever without being silly, and insightful but never remotely pretentious. (Even when he name-checks Bayard Rustin, a somewhat obscure human rights activist, it's to describe him coming back "just to bitch-slap Farrakhan.") His down-to-earth humor and intelligence is a key element in keeping the band's songs from drifting off into either absurdity or self-importance -- the unfortunate yin and yang that run rampant in (or, for some, define) artsy rock. And Soldati has apparently been taking vocal cues from her bandmate. When she steps up to the mic on the title track, she twists lines like, "If you're such a badass, why haven't I seen any blood," into a nursery rhyme sing-a-long that makes them all the more menacing.
Four short home recordings are interspersed among the rest of the more polished, structured offerings. An oft-used technique for sure, but where most bands plop in self-indulgent noisescapes that do nothing but irritate cassette-buyers who can't skip tracks, Smart Went Crazy use their left-field, lo-fi noodlings to space out and pace the record. In fact, the whole album is sequenced like a good novel. The terrific pop-ish offering, "funny as in funny ha-ha" (which has already snagged my vote for song title of the year) hurls itself against a wall of guitar noise that brilliantly sets up the firecracker explosion of "bullfighter." Don't even try and put anything from Con Art on a mix tape, because you're bound to end up dubbing at least five or six tracks to avoid an unnatural break.
I could go on and on about how Devan Ocampo's deliciously intricate drumming never grabs too much attention for itself. Or about Abram Goodrich's wickedly propulsive bass lines. Or Clark's and Jeff Boswell's sharp, intertwining guitar attacks. But that would be missing the point -- this album's brilliance comes from perfect cohesion.
-- Jon Carson
carson@outersound.com
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