Play With Your Head

by Mike Viola, Candy Butchers

Overview

On their/his full-length debut album, Falling Into Place, Candy Butchers' Mike Viola (the group name is really a polite fiction) came off as a successor to Graham Parker and early Elvis Costello in the romantically angered post-punk new wave vein, a worthy enough position that tends to delight critics without engaging the critical mass of fans it takes to maintain a major-label record contract. On his/their second album (this time the billing is Candy Butchers instead of Mike Viola & Candy Butchers), Viola often comes off as a Marshall Crenshaw-style power popper, steeped in the sound of mid-'60s pop/rock and its fascination with unusual sounds audible on the margins of tracks dominated by electric guitar riffs and hooky choruses. "Baby, It's a Long Way Down," for example, is distinctly Beatlesque, while "My Monkey Made a Man Out of Me," apparently a celebration of addiction, boasts an intro and outro that recall George Harrison's flirtation with Indian music. On Falling Into Place, Viola seemed to be writing the same song of romantic disappointment over and over; here he is still disappointed, but his frustration is more global. "The older I get the more it seems/I watch my dreams get smaller," he begins on "It's a Line," and this sense of diminished expectations pervades the songs. The romantic element is not absent, but things are more specific and more desperate, notably on "I Let Her Get Away," in which a pregnancy is compared to mold. By album's end, Viola has practically abandoned the studio trickery to return to a Parker/Costello-like stance on "Make No Mistake," singing over acoustic guitar accompaniment with bitter wordplay that continues into the elegiac closer, "Call Off the Dogs." The album makes another impressive, if severe, statement likely to play well to the brainy and miss the masses. ~ William Ruhlmann

Product Details

Release Date:	03/12/2002
Label:	Columbia / Sony Music Distribution
UPC:	0696998634725
Rank:	152591

Tracks

1. Worry My Dome
2. My Monkey Made a Man Out of Me
3. You Belong to Me Now
4. Ruby's Got a Big Idea
5. Tough Hang
6. Baby, It's a Long Way Down
7. It's a Line
8. I Let Her Get Away
9. My Heart Isn't in It
10. Make No Mistake
11. Call Off the Dogs

Album Credits

Performance Credits

Candy Butchers   Primary Artist
Mike Viola   Primary Artist,Vocals,Guitar
Pete Donnelly   Bass,Yells,Vocals (Background)
Melora Creager   Vocals
Mike Levesque   Vocals (Background),Yells,Drums

Technical Credits

Mike Viola   Arranger,Composer,Producer
Candy Butchers   Performer
Bob Clearmountain   Mixing
Bob Ludwig   Mastering
Jason Fine   Liner Notes
David Boucher   Mixing,Mixing Assistant
Dae Bennett   Engineer
Danny Bennett   Management
Frank Longo   Design,Art Direction