The Emotion Defying Feats of The Daredevil Christopher Wright

The label of "novelty act" could very easily be misapplied to a band with the kind of polarizing presence that The Daredevil Christopher Wright has.     Their harmonizing vocal antics, cheeky lyrics and often musically schizophrenic compositions make them a threesome as far from run of the mill as a band can get.  

Piece by piece, the group's influences on In Deference to a Broken Back are obvious, and as a whole, the album's 11 tracks are leaps and bounds from sounding anything like each other.  To its credit, though, while it may be a "mixed disc" sounding album, it stands upright as a collection, even as it manages to separate nicely into clearly very individual segments - and ones that have more value than just existing as ascendant facsimiles of each other.

I woke up to the dubstep-esque percussion and whirly-gig keyboard intro of The Fatty Acids' "Creature" playing on my ipod alarm clock this morning. I'd been at the Riverwest Public House (again, I'll say it - a damn fine venue right next to Linneman's) over a month ago on a night they were slated to play there, but due to an obligation, could not stay to catch their set. I stopped by the merch table, however, and purchased a copy of their newest album, Leftover Monsterface just before leaving.  The guy manning the table saw me looking over their albums for a moment, indecisively trying to choose which among their four available was going to give me the best first impression.  He handed me Monsterface: "This one is awesome. They locked themselves in a basement when they recorded it." Huh. Intriguing. And sold.