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French TV — #7 The Case Against Art
(Bandcamp Pretentious Dinosaur 06, 2002, CD / DL)

#7 The Case Against Art Cover art

You have to hand it to Mike Sary and Co. — every French TV seems an improvement on the last, a feat impressive considering the strength of 1999's The Violence of Amateurs. Album number seven is here with five long pieces of music and guests including Trap's Warren Dale, guitarist Shawn Persinger, and vocalist Cliff Fortney. All three are present on the album's middle piece, a cover of Happy the Man's "Partly the State." While this rates among my least favorites of that band's songs, the rendition here is a vast improvement over the one on Beginnings, capitalizing on the broad and tasteful strengths of French TV's current line up. The music certainly evinces a number of RIO and Canterbury influences, but Sary's integration of these over the years into his own vision has resulted in an idiosyncratic blend that is practically recognizable now. It's not just the complexity and dynamics, which are abundant throughout, but it's also the quirky humor and oddball time changes that do more than deliver good music, they also deliver it with a casual panache often missing in the dead-serious world of progressive rock. Another of the album's strengths is its wonderful dynamics, a chromatic range from the full-tilt and rocking to the soft and introspective, all enhanced by the tasteful and instrumentally eclectic guest appearances. For fans of the intricate, humorous, and left field, The Case Against Art is likely to leave one with an unsolvable paradox, as this makes a rather damn good case for art. This is clever, tasteful music the fan of avant-rock should make a priority purchase.

by Mike McLatchey, Published 2002-04-01

Led by founder Mike Sary, French TV cranks out clever, intricate, and engaging post-Canterbury prog. With all manner of woodwinds and brass, violin, even a narrator, plus the complement of rock instruments, bits of beer-hall oom-pah pah brass band, lounge lizard and swing jazz, free improvisation, and more, along with that prog thang, are woven together in musical crazy quilt that suggests something of Frank Zappa. The dizzyingly eclectic “Under the Big ‘W’” combines these with progressive gestures redolent of a deconstructed version Yes’s Relayer. The Zappa connection is manifested in the speedy sampled xylophone lines. It careens to a climax as a frenetic scherzo in triple meter before crashing to its conclusion. Bits of Relayer also inform “That Thing on the Wall” and “Partly the State,” but are processed and re-invented through the French TV filter. The latter has some Emersonian Hammond B3 sounds to pull in traditional prog fans, but the musical structures derive from the more complicated Canterbury realm. The raging guitar lines of “That Thang” invoke Holdsworthian fusion, but the piece darts through so many different styles that it cannot be compared to anyone else. The sweet lyricism of “Viable Tissue Matter” veers too close to MOR or smooth jazz (perhaps like Holland’s Solution at their more mainstream) and “One Humiliating Incident After Another” might be too eclectic, too Ivesian for its own good, with bits of folk and regional Americana, music hall, guitar-oriented hard rock, and more, which undermine a sense of direction or focus, but at least French TV are pushing the envelope.

by Dean Suzuki, Published 2002-04-01

Mike Sary has come a long way since his humble anti-establishment ideas created the best English equivalent of Canterbury music: French TV. The slow development with the group has a lot to do with stabilizing the unit by adding key band members and expanding the identity of the group by sheer stubborn persistence. The band is also closer to a cooperative, indicated by four of the five cuts being group written. Leading off the disc is "That Thing on the Wall" which is 100% on the mark and Looney tunes, which would even make Mike Keneally blush! On board as a full time member (parallel with his duties in Gary Parra's Trap) is Warren Dale. "Viable Tissue Matter" takes full advantage of Dale's Minimoog soloing abilities, which in turn pushes the band into Happy the Man symphonic terrain (along with the flute playing of new conspirator Greg Acker). In fact, ex-HtM member, Cliff Fortney's track, "Partly the State" is included with ex-Boud Deun's Shawn Persinger on acoustic guitar! The album is literally a hotbed of progressive rock cross-pollination! Guitarist Dean Zigoris continues to apply his patented shred technique across the album without duress, while violin duties are shared on the album by Chris Smith (also with Dale in Trap) and Cathy Moeller. Lastly, Mac Beaulieu, while on a two-day pass from Rockwell Sanitarium, managed to draft liner notes worth a chuckle or two. Watch for this disc atop the best of lists for next year after the mass public recovery period has expired.

by Jeff Melton, Published 2002-04-01

Filed under: New releases, Issue 24, 2002 releases

Related artist(s): French TV, Shawn Persinger (Prester John)

More info
http://frenchtv.bandcamp.com/album/the-case-against-art

 

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