Riddle me this:
How do you review a CD by one of your favorite bands that may, in fact, be their best work without just saying: "Walter Sickert & THe ARmy of BRoken TOys is an amazing band and "Casualty Menagerie" is their best work to date."?
On the day this new EP arrived I removed it from the mailbox on a wet overcast morning. I was excited but I was also a bit off. It was the second day of fever and (as it turned out) inner infection for me.
The world was grey, silver and strange. In the days that followed I found myself driving around my hilly city, filling my mornings with disease-touched visions. "Casualty Menagerie" is the *perfect* soundtrack for fever-dream fueled travel.
By adding a number of cohorts (Lainey on melodica-basso & kitchen utensils & sequencing, Val Thompson on cello, Myq Kaplan and Heather Kuhn on violins) Walter Sickert (and his one-woman army Edrie) manages to orchestrate his "death folk" into full blow cabaret macabre. This transition is handled skillfully and beautifully. On previous releases it felt as if Walter & the Army were performing their twisted toy stories for a handful of misfit toys.
Now, with fuller orchestration and deeper production, the group evokes a recital for the entire unseelie court. This is tragic music for wicked goblins and pixies. Yet the music isn't otherworldly, it is contemporary and terrestrial. You can identify with it. This courtly, dark cabaret is happening somewhere close by, perhaps in the next room.. but more likely *in* the walls or under the floorboards. The desperation heard on these songs makes you want to rip up those floorboards with your bare hands and join in. Perhaps you won't be the only one with bloody fingers, Walter seems possessed by such a drive that you imagine him working his fingers raw on his guitar and piano.
Obviously he's a passionate man. And what sets "Casualty Menagerie" apart from their debut full length (other than their new musical comrades) is that Walter sounds less hurt and more angry. The debut featured a wounded Walter, his hurt and heart on his sleeve. Now he's more Walter the warrior. This aren't ugly rock fist-in-the-air songs, but it's clear that Walter & Edrie have no desire to sit about and feel sorry for themselves.
Listening to "No Room" and "Carnal Carnivale" you hear their distaste at being sold out and pushed aside. But now there is action to be taken. Walter fully takes on the mantle of pied-piper revolutionary on the lab animal liberation epic "Revenge of the Rats". If revenge is a dish best severed cold "Casualty Menagerie" is the appetizer at a vengeance dinner party.
This dis-quiet evokes Alice Cooper during his mental illness and alcohol-addled "Welcome to My Nightmare" years, not the bombastic rock part but the creepy internal monologue elements (check out his "Years Ago"). Walter is also possessed, briefly, by Jim Morrison (at least his voice) on "Vitagraph". If Tom Waits is the performer in purgatory's lounge then Walter Sickert & THe ARmy of BRoken TOys are the band playing as revenants and wraiths make their decision NOT TO GO to the other side. There's still work to be done (darkness to be explored, strange stories to be told, avenging unfinished) here before we shuffle off to the next world and "Casualty Menagerie" is the playing in the background.
