Moth to Mouth

On his 1996 debut album Big Enough to Disappear, Moris Tepper seemed undecided as to whether he wanted to be a folk-rock singer/songwriter in the mold of Bob Dylan and Neil Young, or a quirky noise rocker like Captain Beefheart and Tom Waits (both of whom had employed him as a sideman). That choice seems to have been resolved — for the most part — seven years later on his second solo album, Moth to Mouth, in favor of the Beefheart/Waits side. Running 61-and-a-half minutes and containing 24 tracks (actually 25 songs, though, counting a hidden one perhaps called "Come See Me" that follows "The Palm of His Hand" at the end), the disc is a hellzapoppin collection of disparate musical ideas, many of them unfinished, with each succeeding track a surprise. Will the next tune be a conventional country-folk ballad? Or a raucous lo-fi rock track on which the singer seems to be screaming through a megaphone? It could be either one, or something else entirely. Some tracks not only present more conventional songs, but also a more polished sound, but usually the sound is self-consciously primitive, with percussion seemingly improvised from kitchen utensils, not unlike a Mitchell Froom/Tchad Blake production. Tepper seems to have about half-a-dozen different vocal styles, ranging from a grainy tenor à la Tom Petty ("Impossible Things") to a more sonorous, near-spoken style in the Johnny Cash manner ("Magic 8 Ball"). But whether he's singing or shouting, strumming or pounding, he produces a series of roughly produced performances that vary considerably in mood.