The Silber Sessions

Packaged like an almost stereotypically hip jazz album from the 1950s and packing in looped rooster calls, Christmas songs, and an album ender called "Fall of the World Trade Center," the collection of compilation appearances and rarities that makes up The Silber Sessions initially feels like something that could almost be called The Ipecac Sessions. This, if only because it would be all too easy to imagine Mike Patton trying something like this, but he need not be the only joker in the pack. Then again, Brian Lea McKenzie, the man behind Electric Bird Noise, isn't really about funny ha-ha himself, though like many who have favored wearing black and recorded moody music, sometimes the humor is of the quietly black sort. Assisted by fellow label stalwarts such as Tara Vanflower and Silber boss Brian John Mitchell, McKenzie jumps magpie-like among various approaches essentially to see what will happen. Songs like "Onward! (Too)," exuding a kind of post-goth mournful anthemicism that could have been a Cure B-side in 1992 or a Smashing Pumpkins album track in 2000, feel the most "normal" of the bunch, if by the genre's own particular standards. "Christmas with Reilly" and "February 23rd" have that as well, in a solo guitar vein or nearly enough. Then again, McKenzie can turn out the country/folk slow-chime lope of "Brian's Theme," touching on another approach in elegant enough fashion, while "Moments Like Last Night Make Me Wanna Believe in Ghosts" turns to a bit of glitch toward the end. As for "Fall," the watery then chaotic piano and subharmonic wobble may not be everyone's cup of tea, but it's not entirely a joke in the end.