The debut CD from this female-male duo of Kit Messick and James Babbo
comes in a digipak with two Mucha paintings. The cover is a picture
of an idealized beauty, with long golden hair entwined with flowers,
in white robes. She gazes out with languid glamour, surrounded by
stylized stars and moons. The back cover shows a young man rending
his bare chest, while a ghostly nymph seems to mock his pain. These
dramatic images perfectly mirror the music within: ornate, idealized
and over-dramatic. Messick has a beautiful voice, and uses
enunciation that you might hear in a cabaret or in musical theater.
Its very proper and precise, the perfect vehicle for Babbo's
lyrics.
His lyrics mostly deal with Lost Ideals and Alienation, and put
together, the song cycle resembles a kind of coming-of-age novel,
wherein the callow protagonist finds himself, after much navel-
gazing. In this context, Messick's distant reading of the
material
makes her a muse of sorts, an omniscient narrator. Babbo favors
purple prose with fantasy references that mars his writing—a
thank-
you to Tolkien uncovers a possible inspiration. But for the most
part, his music—tentative acoustic guitar, backed with discreet,
synthetic orchestration that doesn't overpower—compensates
for some
of the weak lyrics. It's a melancholic mix, with rays of halcyon
brightness. The most egregious failure is `The Undying Man,'
a
convoluted story-song about a man falling in love with fairy
princess, one of the two songs with a male vocalist (who tries to
sound like Peter Murphy). It's a duet, and reminds one too
uncomfortably of one of those bombastic Meatloaf epics. By contrast,
a highlight of the CD is the atypical `In A Box,' which also
features
prominent male harmonies, that has a nice throbbing late 80s new-
wave/goth bass line to liven things up. But most of
`Teknicolor's'
sounds are lulling.

www.middlepillar.com

--craig