Pitchfork

Accentuated with striking vocals and whimsically sophisticated lyrics, Massachusetts native Casey Dienel's blend of cabaret, jazz, folk, and pop places her squarely in the eccentric-women-with-piano pop camp, which is much more fertile territory these days than eccentric-woman-with-acoustic-guitar or eccentric-guy-with-piano pop. Wind-Up Canary features mainly Dienel and her piano, with the occasional accompaniment of crash cymbals, a charmingly rickety drum kit, and a jazz banjo. Her songs show traces of Nellie McKay's subversive formalism, Regina Spektor's bizarro cabaret, and Tori Amos's sweeping scope, but Dienel could be just as easily and fruitfully compared to those outside her camp-- to the Decemberists or Clem Snide or to literary types like George Saunders and Z.Z. Packer, whose short stories share an oddball sensibility and heart-rent humor with Dienel's story songs.

Like most writers, Dienel has her pet topics, first and foremost herself. "Everything" is a snappy birth-of the-artist tale ("When I was only four I found my lonely ivories and we became fast friends"), and "Cabin Fever" recalls her move from her small, seaside Massachusetts hometown to Boston-- a looming milestone in her young life. "Tundra" shouts out to JoAnn Fabrics (an indie first?) and erects a complex metaphor involving the Weather Channel and a broken relationship. The 1960s also feature prominently on Wind-Up Canary, although not in terms of the counterculture so much as the Establishment. Stylistically, she slyly alludes to bossa nova and exotica rhythms without overtly incorporating them, and she deconstructs and rebuilds 60s pop mythology to gee-whiz glee. "Frankie and Annette" re-imagines the Mouseketeers as small-time outlaws, pitiable in their poverty, and on the opener, "Doctor Monroe", Dienel sings about an Everyman who chain-smokes, reads Playboy, drinks highballs. But soon the façade crumbles, and he begins dressing up in his wife Helen's clothes and "speaking to the sixth dimensions through public urinals." Dienel marries this hard-luck tale to her most playful verse melody and her most impassioned chorus, half in awe of the man's savoir faire and half disgusted by his lack of self-examination. It's her best song-- her "Joan Jett of Arc", her "Sea Oak".

As "Doctor Monroe" shows-- and "Tundra", and "The Coffee Beanery"-- Dienel's at her best when she's at her weirdest, and oddly she's at her weirdest when she's at her catchiest, because nothing sells a peculiar daydream as persuasively as an infectious hook. Flirting with preciousness but never going all the way, Dienel always sounds confident in her quirkiness, blissfully unaware that her melodies aren't always strong enough to warrant such self-assuredness or that her lyrics sometimes sound like clever nonsense. But who needs melodies when you've got real songs, or sensible lyrics when you've got so much personality?

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