The Peculiar Pretzelmen - Everything Must Be Broken

Creating an unfortunate self-fulfilling prophecy with the title of this CD, pretty much everything did

break on the PP's latest tour that brought them through Las Vegas. But, they definitely garnered new fans from the pit stop here and these CDs will be played often throughout the summer.

The Pretzelmen seem to have an aversion to putting CD artwork on either their webpage or Facebook page and I am not near a scanner, so you will have to look up these releases to discover what they really look like!

This one opens with a very stripped down "R.F.B" with its minimalist, melodic banjo and toe-tapping drumming (which builds and expands as the song progresses) continuing their style of modern-day, original songs styled after old-country folk tales. "Alabama Autumn Skies" and "Crazy Man Michael" adds strings to the mix for a nice effect on these ballads. Deacon's percussion comes to the forefront a bit more in "Calliope at the End of the World", an off-kilter, gypsy/circus tune while "10 years time" is an all-too-short, creeping, Woody Guthrie-esque (sorta/kinda) tune aided by various extra instrumentation. The finale, "Mr. Rabbit" is very Tom Waits-ian, sounding like it easily could have been a Rain Dogs outtake. Not a criticism, by any means, but here the influence is plain.

My only complaint with these two CD's are that they are far too short! Hope to hear and see more from this duo soon!

Here's the artwork: