Pitchfork

On American Music Club's 1994 album San Francisco, Mark Eitzel declared that "the world is held together by the wind that blows through Gena Rowlands' hair." Rowlands, an accomplished actress, has never been an especially big star, but she's developed something of a cult fanbase for her work in TV drama and films-- particularly those of her late husband, John Cassavetes.

Washington, D.C.'s Bob Massey apparently thinks highly enough of Rowlands to name his latest band after her, and it makes sense I suppose. The former Telegraph Melts member has pointed his latest project's arrows at Hollywood and the way movies cause us to perceive the world and our place in it, and choosing the name of an actress who often worked resolutely outside of Hollywood conventions lines up pretty well with his lyrical swipes at Eisner and Spielberg. And the mood of the album also bears more than a passing affinity for American Music Club's tear-in-beeriest moments, so that Eitzel quote isn't up there for nothing.

La Merde et Les Etoiles (French for "Shit and the Stars", if I read it correctly) is so unified a work of brooding ghost cabaret miserablism you could practically call it a concept album, though the term is a little strong for a record with no overarching narrative. The music could qualify as chamber pop if it had any pretense of wanting to be pop-- instead the violas, vibes, clarinets, and cellos drift along behind Massey's wine-stained baritone, forming a sort of stream-of-consciousness backdrop that drifts in and out of dissonance, occasionally dissolving to a minimalist wisp.

In fact, on a few songs in the middle of the record, the minimalism and lack of solid structure is a bit overbearing. "Pilot for a Situation Tragedy" is cleverly titled, but the arrhythmic electric guitar strumming and barely there accompaniment just die without anywhere to go, and the song dies with them. Much better is closer "Power, Lies, Helena's Lips", one of the few tracks with an actual drum beat. The arrangement is no more solid than anywhere else, though, so the effect is one of chaotic elements being stuffed in a box and escaping again, like a Lucy skit for insomniac depressives.

Elsewhere, Massey appropriates the melody of the national anthem for a break-up meditation and wraps the album up with "The Last Words of Lesley Gore", an excellent song that plays again with barely structured chamber-pop texture, featuring a great breakdown where he slips into a dejected take on Lesley Gore's "It's My Party", morphing it into a startling one-sided conversation about a girl. The moment is perhaps most indicative of the potential of the Gena Rowlands Band, potential that's about three-quarters realized on La Merde et Les Etoiles.