Details
Track Listing
1. Merriment
2. Fissle
3. Feather
4. Sunny Pasture
5. Preponderance
6. Haiku
7. Mighty Monkey
8. DNA
9. Deeper Currents
10. Merriment Reprise
| Details | | Contributing artists: | Bob Kimbell, Jack Logan | | Distributor: | Redeye Music Distribution | | Recording Type: | Studio | | Recording Mode: | Stereo | | SPAR Code: | n/a |
Album Notes
Personnel includes: Vic Chesnutt (vocals, guitar); Kelly Keneipp, Nikki Keneipp (various instruments); Curtiss Pernice (guitar, background vocals); Bob Kimbell (piano); Jack Logan (bass); Aaron Phillips (drums); Sam Mixon, The Pans (background vocals).
Producers: Vic Chesnutt, Kelly & Nikki Keneipp.
Georgia husband-and-wife musicians Kelly and Nikki Keneipp have a small, lo-fi label, Backburner Records. They also have a rising cult-hero friend in singer/songwriter/brilliantly whacked-out lyricist Vic Chesnutt. All these elements are brought together in the subtle pastiche of MERRIMENT. Here, the Keneipps provide unique and playful musical backdrops, while Chesnutt contributes his unmistakable voice, his gut-string guitar strumming, and some of his most wondrously silly lyrics to date.
MERRIMENT plays just like its title, marvelous talents proving it's never too late to have a happy childhood, and a joyfully vibrant one at that. Vic Chesnutt's lyrics are twisted nursery rhymes about spiders and caterpillars and "a jolly kid upon a trike," floating above bizarre, lo-fi, borderline progressive melody lines. The title track is pure genius, lying somewhere between David Bowie and the Halo Benders, as Chesnutt's vocals draw the listener into his child-like netherworld. There are also some relatively straightforward bluesy-pop songs amid all this quirkiness, such as the introspective "Sunny Pasture," and the driving "Preponderance."
Industry Reviews
4 stars out of 5 - ...A piano-led collection that doffs a hat to Jimmy Webb and Van Dyke Parks....Something of a return to form.
Q (10/01/2000)
...You'd be hard pressed to find an album this year that brims with more innate charm and musicality...
No Depression (09/01/2000)
...The Keneipps piece together a tattered patch-quilt of piano, guitar and assorted kitchen sink silliness in support of Vic's inimitable wordplay...it's his cracked and smirking genius...that raises MERRIMENT above its occasionally pallid musical fabric...
CMJ (06/19/2000)
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