Boxing Dreams

"Dreamy/frenetic soundscapes, dual-lead guitar heroics, haunting Celto/Afric vocals, avant-jazz weirdness—it could almost be the soundtrack to a lost Wachowski Brothers film, as the song “Morpheus,” with its outlandishly shifting sonic atmosphere hints at. Or think a jittery, demented Celtic-Western Swing amalgam filtered through Italian canzone (“Crazy Legs”): Bill Frisell encountering a bizarre Bob Wills/Carlo Actis Data vibe. Or contemplate the purely distilled, wrenching heartland feeling of “Mayrose” and “Story of Jones”—Charlie Haden drunk on moonshine? Maybe. Or the happy/sinister, drunken-sailor “Mexican Radio” sensibility of “Over-n-Out,” careening through the mind as it depredates every normal human emotion. Then there’s the Mad Max German Polka, “Lost in Günter’s Wald,” morphing midstream into crazy guitar-drums meditations: not for the musically timid!....This is one of those discs that needs to be encountered without preconceptions or expectations so that the wild, untamed, musical peroration waltzing with garden-variety, hot-house sonic paranoia can be heard sans prejudice. Special note must be made of Mat Maneri’s viola contributions, fully elaborated on “Crazy Legs” and “The Return of the Peanut Butter Queen.” These are the sickest string sounds on disc since early Eyvind Kang....His work on “Story of Jones” manages to be endearing and scary all at once. Also noteworthy is the way English lyrics eat at the same table as their Celtic and African counterparts (as on “Big Mouth”). These odd lingual juxtapositions nicely correlate to their counterpart musical amalgamations."

"With songs derived from the lyrics of ancient Gaelic poems and sprung by African beats, Noonan and his crew have crafted a spirited, worldly music that hits with the "Susie Q" bop of a Marciano right (or crash of a forearm trailing behind his left hook)—hard and sneaky like that. From the thunderous "Courage," driven by Afro-Celtic howls and Marc Ribot's fuzz guitar, the group skips into "Morpheus," a perky pop number that The Cranberries might have produced if they'd sung in their native Gaelic. Likewise, the album highlight, "Big Mouth," jumps through the vocals of tribal dance before tripping into a light Irish reel....Noonan's drumming is consistently of the go-for-broke-each-round variety. It drives the distorted punk-country-metal barrage (if you can imagine such a thing) of guitarists Ribot and Aram Bajakian. Mat Maneri's viola also features prominently and serves to bridge any gaps this ethnic and genre-bending music encounters on its path between the lyrical and explosive ("Story of Jones")...."

"...one of the most unique albums I've heard in a long time, and certainly one of the most interesting I've heard so far this year....Each of the players bob and weave around each other, sometimes moving elegantly in unison, then tangling in vicious clashes that sound like blood is being spilt. But all the while Noonan's coherent vision holds the album together brilliantly. On songs such as 'Crazy Legs' and 'Big Mouth' there's a welcome lightness of touch and humour, which counterbalances the more knotty, fuzzy passages where the two guitars and viola really let rip. The cumulative effect of this ebb and flow between sweet melody and dissonance is disorientating and delicious, like a sweaty dash through city streets before pausing for a refreshing drink, or eleven rounds of the titular boxing dreams, with breaks after each round to receive a rubdown and pep talk. My one criticism, which is especially apparent after repeat listens, is that this is an exhausting album....Overall, if you like your music challenging, complex and unique, this album comes highly recommended. File somewhere between the Magic Band and Fela Kuti, but don't expect this to be quite at home anywhere in your music collection."