Time to Dream

Listing Ship, the duo of singer/songwriter/guitarist Lyman Chaffee and singer/songwriter/violist Heather Lockie that called itself Leather Hyman on its first two albums (Host Body [1997] and Sunshine and Other Forms of Radiation [2000]) before changing to its current name on 2002's Dance Class Revolution, is an unusual combination of influences. Lockie, singing most of the songs double-tracked, recalls quirky folk acts like the Roches and Uncle Bonsai most of the time, not only in her matter-of-fact phrasing, but also in her oddball lyrics to songs like "The Temptation of Miss Piggy." She also recalls Nico without the German accent on such flat recitations as "Sleep of the Beloved." The Velvet Underground (whose Nico-sung "All Tomorrow's Parties" Leather Hyman covered on Host Body) also influences "Crooked Teeth," sung as a duet by Chaffee and Lockie, who circle each other like John Doe and Exene Cervenka in X on this electric guitar-driven track. The ruling mood of the album is playfulness, as the group (which apologizes in the annotations for "all the bad French") combines images of food and war on "Dans la Cuisine" and revives a couple of earlier songs, "Baise Ça" (a title that would earn an explicit-lyrics label if properly translated) and "Eda No Mel," featuring a backward vocal, which was known as "Lemonade" on Dance Class Revolution. Chaffee takes the lead for two songs sequenced toward the end of the disc, both of them imbued with the spirit of Appalachian/Scottish death ballads: "Death," in which he sings of overcoming the Grim Reaper, and "Sarah," in which he comes back from the war to murder his beloved. Listing Ship performs all its songs with tongue in cheek, but that doesn't keep them from demonstrating a musical sophistication to go with their wit.