THe StarPhoenix,
Album Review
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Vancouver's Geoff Berner, the man with the key to Bruno, Sask. and the man who ran for the Rhinoceros Party of Canada against Gordon Campbell in the B.C. 2001 election, is back with another riotous klezmer album, Victory Party.
With various parts klezmer/punk rock/'20s Berlin music hall and Kurt Weill and Bertolt Brecht, Berner howls and moans his way through songs with such a political edge they almost knife through the speakers. They certainly cut the listener's complacency.
The dramatic rhythm, hard rock and wild screams of the title cut illustrate a dream of the struggle for social and political justice finally ending, the victory celebration coming on. And where is it? Just past the "charred remains of the orphanage, turn right at the pile of dog-chewed corpses." Victory, indeed.
Laughing Jackie the Pimp comes from the same part of town as Mack the Knife, only he rises and falls hard to a music hall song. After him the Wealthy Poet (a joke in Canada) brags of all the borders he can slip across "when it's time to run again."
Interspersed with these more energetic tunes -and the downright wild ones, such as I Kind of Hate Songs with Ambiguous Lyrics -are the sad, accordion and violin lament of Mayn Rue Platz (My Resting Place) or closer Cherry Blossoms ("what a waste, what a waste.")
Also, there's the klezmer dance of Jail, a wonderful, naïve fantasy in which a woman longs to go to jail for new shoes and three meals a day. Berner takes on the police, Jews longing for a superman to save them and myriad other social injustices and delusions.
04/04/11
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