FROM THE GREAT AMERICAN SONGBOOK

www.boomkat.com

"Preservation sure now how to package their releases: this second collaboration between Charalambides' Tom Carter and Christian Keefer comes housed in a lovely fold-out sleeve housing thick card inserts with liner notes for each song as penned by some of the avant-folk royalty these two are prone to hanging around with. Wooden Wand, Sharron Kraus, Glenn Jones, Tetuzi Akiyama and Tony Conrad are among the writers who pay tribute not only to Tom and Christian, but their source material - all of which comes from American traditional folk songs now in the public domain. As you'd probably expect, these two aren't always prone to sticking closely to their original texts, and familiar standards like 'Camptown Races' are given a fairly liberal overhaul. Tony Conrad writes at length about the interesting use of 'Doodah' in the original, citing this as one of the earliest examples of scat singing. That's the kind of info most albums just wouldn't bother giving you, but you'll be glad of the pains Preservation have gone to in providing context for these often very obscure songs (usually made that little bit more obscure by the adventurous cover..