THIS ALBUM IS NOT FUNNY 

More accurately, playing this album will not induce the brand of gut-busting, teary-eyed revelry that an episode of Chappelle’s Show or a YouTube clip of Anna Karkowska’s vibrato will. It is funny like the idea of a Rothko turning the stomachs of well-heeled gluttons at the Four Seasons is funny, or how anything Andy Kaufman ever suited up for is funny. It might be a little uncomfortable, rings clear in its truth, and sometimes reveals itself gradually. 

As a quartet, we are drawn to virtuosic string writing like flies to…stuff that smells good to flies, which by extension means we are drawn to the dark cave of the rehearsal room. Parsing nested tuplets and tuning microtonal harmonies is an intense bit of business, and more often than not, it is a salty one-liner or vocal impersonation of Aaron Neville that comes to the rescue when the pressure reaches DEFCON 2. Humor is also so much more than a setup and tag, though. It can compel us to inquire why we are laughing, and expose hypocrisy, and digest an otherwise off-limits topic, and question our assumptions, or simply be clever.