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Reviews

Bob Drake — The Skull Mailbox
(ReR Megacorp CTA9, 2001, CD)

The Skull Mailbox Cover art Bob Drake may be a genius, but it is fair to say that, as far as the results of his craft go, he is more than a bit scatterbrained. The Skull Mailbox is chock full of ideas, often more than one for each of these 27 tracks. There are some recurring musical themes to give the work a sense of continuity, and the lyrical themes all center on tales of the bizarre and macabre. But rather than a modern big-budget horror film packed with special effects, spurting blood, and six-channel Dolby digital pummeling, Drake’s tales are more reminiscent of spooky stories told around a campfire – kind of goofy, full of strangeness, and with a little twist at the corner of the mouth. Most of the tracks are built around acoustic guitars, often played with a frenetic fingerpicking style. Onto that foundation, Drake overdubs electric guitars, keyboards, drums, violin, a multitude of voices, and other instruments unlisted. The voices alone provide quite a bit of variety. Drake sings, speaks, and shrieks in a wide variety of tones, both straight and processed, and you’d swear he had help. The whole thing fits together as a more or less seamless single work, albeit one that jumps around stylistically. One of my favorite features is the scratchy electric guitar sounds that show up at unexpected times, providing seemingly random bursts of distortion. While this CD is too jumpy to listen too frequently, it is one of the most original and inventive releases of the year.

by Jon Davis, Published 2002-09-01

A new solo release from Bob Drake is like receiving a cool shrunken head as a sincere gift: you think it's bizarre, but secretly you learn to cherish it. The Skull Mailbox is a set of 27 short pieces executed in a direct approach much like Drake's first album, What Day Is This from 1994. The gothic theme is comparable to works by Edward Gorey (The Hapless Child) or even Edgar Allan Poe. But the composer has an unusual spin on these bleak starting points, since he literally charms his way through his songs. By using acoustic guitar passages with weird inversions and whispering creepy lyrics, the crafty guitarist proves again he is quite the arranger. Even though he does everything himself, the end results always sound closer to a full band recording rather than just demos. Examples of the man's prowess include "The Shocking Efflorescence" which describes the mishaps of a few mislead followers and "You Can't Outwit That Thing" which speaks for itself. Tracks such as "The Tragic Séance" dispel any mood of optimism as the body count mounts while the listener proceeds through the disc. Where this album intersects with projects such as Peter Hammill's The Fall of the House of Usher is in the delivery: both are mysterious and compelling. Overall, I consider this work to be an essential clue to Drake's other band project, Thinking Plague who is much in need of wider recognition. I highly recommend this work as my top choice for 2001.

by Jeff Melton, Published 2002-04-01

I’m familiar with Bob Drake from Thinking Plague and 5uus, but this is my first encounter with one of his solo albums. I am somewhat at a loss for words in trying to describe The Skull Mailbox. Folk music from hell maybe? Or, perhaps a bit more accurately, folk music that Poe or Lovecraft might have composed, had they been songwriters. This CD’s 27 tracks, the majority of which are under two minutes long, are lyrically rooted in the macabre — as should be evident from track titles like “In the Tomb,” “Fearsome Heads,” “The Horrible Garden,” “The Tragic Seance,” etc. The music is largely acoustic and has somewhat of a folk-rock character to it, with lots of acoustic guitar, bits of fiddle, and a few old-timey country moves. But there is another side to the music on The Skull Mailbox. There is some electric guitar and a bit of thunderous “hide the children” bass here and there, but far more striking is the dissonance that often breaks down into pure noise, the sudden bursts of unidentifiable sound, and the ear-challenging production effects. All of these add a bit of the spontaneous unpredictability of RIO. All in all, this is actually quite a fun album. The lyrics are so over-the-top in their grotesque-horror themes that they sometimes become humorously campy, while the tension between folksy and RIO elements in the music suggests playful, musical mischief rather than pretentious avant-gardism. Unusual, but recommended for the adventurous.

by Jim Chokey, Published 2002-04-01

Filed under: New releases, Issue 25, 2001 releases

Related artist(s): Bob Drake

 

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