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Current mood:  frisky Category: Music
JOHN TAGLIERI -
Lives Pt. 1
Leap Dog Music 2009
The beginning of a beautiful friendship and a musical-cum-literary itinerary.
There's nothing new in turning a book into a song cycle; likewise, telling a story through music is an established thing. John Taglieri, though, has found a different approach to it. An acclaimed singer and guitarist, he embarked on a project which would include several EPs, but it was on writing the second one that Taglieri and his co-writer Brad Whitley saw a certain common thread running through the pieces and with the help of writer Gil Gonzalez came up with a novel called "Lives" where each chapter points to a composition of the same title. What crystallized was six records and six books, this being the first installment.
While the travelogue documenting the adventures of "self-professed rejects" Max and Cate is interesting in itself, reading the book before listening is optional - yet it enriches the experience. You don't have to know you're in New Jersey to imagine the fair behind the playful "Ferris Wheel" that goes into a headspin once its infectious chorus kicks gentle picking into electric swirl, and vertiginous love in the anthemic, almost orchestral, drama of "With You I Want To Be". There's an inviting thick ring and a bagpipe-like hook to "Make A Mistake With Me", and if "Breathe" throws an alternative cloth on the '60s harmonies, it has a tasty organ bite and a soul-warming guitar solo, so when "Epilogue" leads you back to the fair you're already asking for more.
Dmitry M. Epstein [dmitry@epstein.to]
7/3/09
http://dmme.net/reviews/reviews40.html#taglieri
4:43 PM
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