NORMAN —
“Orange an Okey-Dokey Orchestration”
Zèbre
Orange
Zanzibar! Records
This exciting new album is another example of the incredibly good music coming from Norman’s scene. Ben Lindesmith (vocals/guitar/synthesizer) is highly adept at bringing artists together and focusing their creativity.
His band is Todd P. Loftin (guitar/mandolin), John Thomas (bass/vocals), Scott Young (drums) and Jonny White (keys/synthesizer).
Besides that talent, for this disc he assembled another half-dozen musicians on guitar, violin, saxophone and trumpet.
The result is 10 tracks of recorded bliss. Sophisticated introspection collides with unvarnished musical passion in an amalgam of electronica, voice and primal percussion. A gentle sensibility on several songs recalls early Jefferson Airplane.
Annatova Neches’ haunting vocals in “Metapickens” float through a Rega rhythm meets Weather Report rhapsody.
The lyrical poetry of “Oh Blue” is gilded by a brass refrain that carries the vocals to a higher plane. “Leaving Norman” has a bittersweet irony that’s undoubtedly humorous for some listeners and a tear-jerker for others.
Many of this town’s talented young people leave for big cities, but the conventional wisdom is that, eventually, they always return home. “That Girl” is homage to a woman who drives the author crazy.
The simplicity of the song is in the best Woody Guthrie tradition. And, like the bard from Okemah, “Orange” is an album Oklahoma can be proud of.
