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Walker Kong

Deliver Us From People

(Magic Marker; US: 27 Mar 2007; UK: Available as import)

The title Deliver Us From People, like most of the album’s lyrics, makes the most sense when you roll with the idea that this band of five Minneapolis rock n’ rollers has been replaced by animals, like the tiger-faced drummer on the cover. Consider the album a cry of help from our animal friends—mostly playful, sometimes philosophical, and occasionally overly strident (lots of talk of “freedom”). On that front it succeeds best when it feels like a dream, a quality accentuated by the dreamier side of their vocal harmonizing, and not hurt by one of the vocalists sounding a lot like ultra-surrealist Robyn Hitchcock. Just as often as surrealists, though, this band of animals resembles a high-powered power-pop group, with Kinks tendencies but also a habit of expressing each thought with a power chord. Picture a bunch of tiger-faced, human-bodied, leather-jacketed stadium-rockers on stage, surrounded by bright lights and fog machines: Cheap Trick reborn as mythological man-beasts, with chips on their shoulders.

Rating:

Dave Heaton has been writing about music on a regular basis since 1993, first for college newspapers and DIY fanzines and now mostly on the Internet. In 2000, the same year he started writing for PopMatters, he founded the online arts magazine ErasingClouds.com, for which he is still the editor and main writer. He also writes music reviews for the print magazine The Big Takeover and has a blog column on their website, BigTakeover.com. He has a Bachelors degree in Journalism (1996) and a Masters degree in English (1999), both from Truman State University, in the underrated town of Kirksville, Missouri, Though he does enough music-listening and writing for it to be a full-time job, it is not one. He has held a series of editing, writing and business communications positions at small and large companies in Kansas, Michigan and Pennsylvania. He currently lives in Kansas City.


Tagged as: walker kong
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