Great surprise.
Return of the Frog Queen
comes out of nowhere, in no way the follow-up to
Jeremy Enigk
's two previous LPs with
Sunny Day Real Estate
.
Enigk
chooses a really remarkable path, taking his highly dramatic, angst-ridden singing to a totally new sound. Now he favors harshly played acoustics. Way more surprising,
lassos a whole orchestra to flesh out the background of each song!
still screams like the abandoned child of
Plastic Ono Band
Lennon
and
"Heart Shaped Box"
Cobain
, a real shake-up. Likewise, his orchestra has equally dangerous intents. The most startling musical moment of all 1996 is the second half of the otherwise buried
"Shade and the Black Hat,"
where the pent-up frustration inherent in this whole LP is suddenly let loose like
were the delirious keeper of Pandora's box. He pounds a piano and howls like his wife just left him for his best friend, as the violins, violas, and cellos scrape at their strings as if to break them, and the flutes, piccolos, trumpets, trombones, French horns, and clarinets blow like they were hired by a wolf to blast a few recalcitrant pigs' houses down. The waves of
classical
countermelodies are extraordinary, adding on to each other to create an
"1812 Overture"
anvil clarion call, a roar so dense, so overpowering, it's like gasoline exploding, even more so as they back
's fevered wail as if he were long past desperation. There are many other smaller, striking moments -- many far sweeter, too, though always tempered by
's dark voice -- found throughout the LP, such as the chorus of
"Carnival,"
where the man and his players turn positively paranoid to the suddenly depraved strains of circus sounds. The overall songwriting is superb, too. A truly remarkable work that has done the unthinkable,
Frog Queen
breaks new ground yet remains a direct hit, with the passion, power, and rage of
punk
; the simple, appealing babbling of
folk
; and even the multidimensional, nasty din of modern Russian
. Wow. ~ Jack Rabid