| Fables and Falsehoods is the brilliant, sepia-toned soaked
offering from Tumbledown House that starts off like a black and white silent film and keeps rollicking along into a colorful tapestry of clever tales of woe and object lessons wrapped in a crushed-velvet punch. Gillian Howe and Tyler Ryan Miller, the duo who are Tumbledown House spared no expense; left no rock unturned, and climbed every mountain high to unearth a sweet, tasty, little gem of an album.
Lyrically speaking, the turns of phase, puns, and stories told are intriguing and clever — like the nod to Pinocchio on “Master Cherry Finds a Strange Piece of Wood,” or the obscure reference to the jazz innovator Leon “Bix” Beiderbecke in “Windy City,” which is the same song sporting the lyrics “dirty feet” and “kettle corn” — interesting, in a 1920’s, Jazz Age kind of way. My favorite in this collection of lyrical acrobatics is contained in the song “One Mistake Will Do.”
Tyler Ryan Miller’s production work and talents on this album remind me of going to a steakhouse and having a perfect meal with impeccable service to boot! Ladies and gents, this is how it’s done. The tremendous talents of Chris Cundy, Adam Greenberg, Jake Fleming, Raquel Kober, Tom Murphy, Leslie Bahn, and Gregory Davis, Sean Lehmann, Roger Lewis and of course, Tyler, bring forth a vibe and stout musicianship that conjures up images of dancing girls, revelers and assorted shady characters, as flappers and gangsters parade to their soundtrack.
Gillian Howe supplies the narration with her pipes. Her vocal work is pure artistry; gorgeous in delivery and flow, dazzlingly original. Sometimes her voice is throaty and thick, like the taste of chocolate late at night; other times, it’s well-toned, muscular and breathy like a cool breeze on a hot summer’s day. And there are moments when her voice rises like fire roaring from a white-hot furnace, launching the lyrics into a meaningfulness which carries the music along and wraps around it in a sultry grand serpentine fashion; bringing the arrangements, tempos, verses, choruses, into a splendid mix of camp and pomp that is both chillingly deadly and warmly seductive in the same breath; the song “T-Bone Cologne” is great slice of what I describe. Gillian’s performance, far above solid, captures your attention again and again throughout the album. It’s enough to make the Rocky Mountains do the Charleston.
KT is also the columnist and writer for “Strings and Things” – check out articles at www.bozone.com. |
