CD released: Nov 17, 2023
T he curtain rings down on 2023, and so much more, with the proverbial "Opus You Didn't Know You Were Waiting For"-a new musical from Erik Paparozzi and Gregg Turkington - and the first-ever Drag City Christmas/Holiday album -Neil Hamburger Presents Seasonal Depression Suite. Over the past two decades, Turkington's conception of the rotten existence of "America's Funnyman" has evolved in unexpected ways. Drifting first from an entirely fictive milieu into our actual reality, Neil Hamburger has stubbornly fallen upward ever since, performing live all around the world, appearing on television and in motion pictures, eventually starring as himself in 2015's Entertainment. Whether performing in front of hardcore acolytes in bars and clubs or unsuspecting crowds on the arena circuit, Neil's stalwart character has endured and and grown into an all-round entertainer, entering the musical realm on 2008's Sings Country Winners. On 2019's Still Dwelling project, Turkington collaborated with arranger/producer Erik Paparozzi (Cat Power, Lizard Music, RuPaul's Drag Race), whose sensibilities aligned perfectly with Turkington's own musical obsessions; together, they created a lush sound redolent of long-forgotten television variety shows and underappreciated pop songs from the dementia-tinged golden years of the golden age of American entertainment, the 1960s and 70s. Thus inspired, Turkington and Paparozzi began to write new songs for other voices, an assembled group of which sing the Seasonal Depression Suite. This song-cycle is filtered through the lens of various guests stuck in a perfectly average chain-hotel during the holiday season, wallowing in self-pity and paranoia, re-living personal catastrophes both real and imagined, or simply trying to use the hotel vending machine. Influenced by everything from Thom Bell to Tommy to the troll-ish misery of Trip Advisor reviews, Seasonal Depression Suite provides another entry in the sprawling satirical critique of America that Turkington has been engaged in with his multifarious enterprises and collaborations since the early 90s, including but not limited to Zip-Code Rapists, Great Phone Calls, Faxed Head, Yellow River Boys, On Cinema at the Cinema, and of course, Neil Hamburger. The musical tapestry woven by Paparozzi and Turkington draws from the stage musicals, pop vocal albums, film scores, rock concept albums, new wave mini-masterpieces, and singer-songwriter epics that have captured their imaginations since childhood, in pitch-perfect support of their fictitious hotel guests and their tormented concerns. To sing these parts, a once-in-a-lifetime all-star cast was assembled-including Neil Finn (Split Enz, Crowded House, Fleetwood Mac), Annabella Lwin (Bow Wow Wow), Alan Bishop (Sun City Girls), Bonnie 'Prince' Billy, acclaimed singer/ performance artist Puddles Pity Party, voice actress Natalie Peyser, J.P. Hasson (Pleaseeasaur), enigmatic vocalist (and Frank Sinatra's granddaughter) A.J. Lambert, Paparozzi himself and, of course, Neil Hamburger. Among the many musicians accompanying the cast were Scarlet Rivera (Bob Dylan's Rolling Thunder Revue), Danny Heifetz (Mr. Bungle), B r McKinnon (Mr. Bungle), Prairie Prince (The Tubes), Atom Ellis (Dieselhed), Jason Schimmel (Secret Chiefs 3), and Alex Jules (The Monkees band)-an international assemblage whose talents give Seasonal Depression Suite its epic sweep. With all hands on board, Turkington and Paparozzi created their own kind of masterpiece, like Sinatra's late-period concept album Watertown fused with the misfit comedy of Neil Hamburger-a work that looks at a cast of characters both ordinary and bizarre, as they make their way from one grievance to another, traveling from place to place, hoping to live, while waiting to die. There won't be another album like Seasonal Depression Suite anytime soon-if ever. And that's a shame. But don't focus on the existential truths-instead, take a holiday trip to the heart of American joy and sorrow, with Gregg Turkington, Erik Paparozzi and a cast of thousands (metaphorically speaking)- as they sing the Seasonal Depression Suit |
