Jeromy

Jeromy Barber and David Morrison, "All Kinds Of Wrong"



Jeromy Barber and David Morrison, two talented Renaissance men who made their way to East Texas via New York and Austin, respectively, have achieved an odd and amusing sort of balance on their soon-to-be-released collaboration.



"All Kinds Of Wrong," a batch of out-of-left-field lyrics that are gleefully twisted, sounds like the offspring of Ween and the Violent Femmes, if Tom Waits was the drunk uncle who baby-sat during the day. Pair their inspired wordplay with some heavy musicianship, and you end up with 11 odes to underachieving that work on several different levels at the same time. Who would have thought that a song about Super Mario Brothers (complete with actual playing tips, mind you) could come across as good advice? "You can fly if you can find some wings/look for a box of precious things." Why, thank you. I'll take that to heart.



There's lots of good stuff here, from the understated silliness of "It's for You" ("My love is whole kernel canned corn/my love is NC-17 porn") to the infectiously witty "Not A Sailor Song" ("They don't drink Crown Royal/they drink Royal Crown"). It's not all pun and games, though. Both of these guys are adept at framing simple truths in artful phrases; when Barber sings "We're all going bald right now inside" on "Today," I sort of laugh and cringe at the same time. It's funny, and not so funny, because it's true.



It's tempting to peg "All Kinds Of Wrong" as the work of literate misanthropes with a flair for the dramatic, but the dichotomy of brilliance and absurdity goes beyond the average bored-intellectual-with-a-guitar fare. Just when you think you have a handle on the nonsensical, you find another conceit to wrap your head around.



— Kendal Rogers