Okay all you DIYers, picture this: Joel Cage
sitting in his bedroom (probably not wearing shoes) hooking up a
Fostex E-16, 16 track recorder, and laying down 13 songs. Naturally,
he handles all the vocals and plays nearly every instrument you hear.
He mixes it to DAT, and voila - he's made himself and album and never
left the house. And that, my friends, is "how it's done."
Of course, all that wouldn't mean squat if
he didn't have the chops and the songs to mame it worth hearing.
He does. Even
better, he knows how to take a classic song and reinvent it. In this
case, it's U2's "Where The Streets Have
No Name". Cage strips it down to just
voice and guitar and still manages to match the fiery passion that
Bono had before he discovered irony. The performance is so good it
almost overshadows the remaining twelve originals. Almost.
"Rose"
boasts a lyric that wouldn't be out of place on an early U2 album and
comes closest to matching the energy of "Streets".
Still, there are many more moments of
aural pleasure. "Wander", with it's
descending chord progression and and 6/8 lilt is one.
"Baggage"
cranks up the electric guitars as Cage lists all the baggage -
ex-wives and ex-lovers among them - that he'd like to put on a
freight train. Throughout the album he displays a keen pop
sensibility, never letting his obvious instrumental abilities weigh
down his songwriting. Bedroom activities are not typically submitted
for review, but this is one instance where it's good to be "caught in
the act."
Neil Fagan, is a singer songwriter and freelance
journalist living in Nashville, TN. Review appeared in Volume 6, Issue 37 in May 1999
