Music Review: Ben Cook-Feltz, ‘Cook-Feltz Sings Son of Schmilsson’
The Minnesota-based artist’s tribute to Harry Nilsson is a three-ring circus of fun, beauty and artistic finesse.
Ben Cook-Feltz’s Cook-Feltz Sings Son of Schmilsson album artwork. Album design by Emily Murphy; photography by Mike Levad.
The ringmaster is an essential part of the circus, serving as a guide through an exotic and unfamiliar world. In the best of shows there’s thrill, laugh-out-loud silliness, dramatic death-defying acts and, if it is done skillfully, joyful wonder. Ben Cook-Feltz’s loving reinterpretation of Harry Nilsson’s 1972 album Son of Schmilsson is a wonder-filled three-ring circus, and Cook-Feltz, also known by the moniker “BCF,” is the one doffing the tophat and wearing the elegant long-tailed coat.
There’s nothing more fun than being in on a gag, and BCF cues the listener from the first sound of the album, a whispered snicker (reminding me of the Hanna Barbera cartoon dog Muttley) on the opening track, “Take 54.” We’re invited to join in on the project’s wink-wink, nudge-nudge spirit. “This is going to be fun,” Cook-Feltz seems to say as he ushers the audience into his madcap irreverent tribute.
There are many points in the album where Cook-Feltz breaks the fourth wall and speaks directly to the listener, a disarmingly charming trick. In another such moment, the track “Joy” begins with a muttered “Oh boy” prior to the enchanting staccato rhythm emanating from BCF’s keyboard.
While the tone is light and self-deprecating, BCF and his cast of players are straight-up and dead-on at every turn. This album is not simply shenanigans—it’s expertise and precision at its finest; art with a limitless sense of fun. One entire track, “You’re Breakin My Heart,” is recorded with the bluegrass highwire act that is the High 48s. Every one of David Robinson’s whirlwind mandolin licks is articulate and smart, dizzying and deeply dexterous, sticking the landing in the white hot spotlight. You can imagine the crowd under the big top going wild!
Ben Cook-Feltz. Photo courtesy of the artist.
It takes proficiency and showmanship to switch levels of diction and go from telling stories with bawdy words to songs imbued with the truest sincerity. The full and lush keyboard sounds in “Turn on Your Radio” marry to the lightest of production touches with lovely results. In “Remember,” Haley E. Rydell’s violin part enters so lightly that it could be a distant vocal harmony. It slowly builds, our hearts swelling as Ben Cook-Feltz’s longing tenor beckons:
Remember is a place from long ago
Remember filled with everything you know
Cook-Feltz’s voice rings out in the purest of fashion throughout this album, seemingly limitless and perfect. Elsewhere on the record, Rydell contributes actual vocal harmonies that are light and blood close. Their entwined voices make you believe in the call to give one’s dreams a try in the simple and elegant melody of “The Lottery Song.”
The album’s sonics are wildly entertaining while somehow not veering into cartoony. How can something this utterly gorgeous have kazoo, bongos, the sound of gargling, and a low voice doubling a bass line with an oompah band-like “bomp, bomp”? How can a set of tones, ranging from killer electric guitar distortion to angelic choral notes, with the grooviest of swerves, exist in the same plane? How can BCF incorporate what he describes as a “strange old organ thing” on the track “Ambush” and make it work cohesively as part of an overall album?
It speaks to the utter prowess and experience of Cook-Feltz, who also produced the album. This is not merely a cool and hip call back to a quirky and luminous album from 1972. This is a love letter to an artist who has provided inspiration and deep influence.
In Cook-Feltz Sings Son of Schmilsson BCF has created a culminating final act for the original album, all the pieces pinwheeling around the ring, trapeze artists soaring through the air above the listener. Acrobats, elephants, clowns and jugglers are paraded out, suspending our disbelief that something this sublimely beautiful and giddy could ever occur. At the center, directing the kaleidoscope of delightful musical traffic, is BCF, the brilliant ringmaster, with a knowing wink and smirk. Cook-Feltz is a skillful guide to this wildest of albums, confident in the knowledge that the magic has, once again, worked.
Cook-Feltz Sings Son of Schmilsson is simply a triumph.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Doyle Turner. Photo credit: no_aesthetic_stills.
Doyle Turner loves words. Whether it is shaping syllables into songs, poems, early morning journals, handwritten thank yous, lists, or album reviews, he is in a deep and abiding relationship with his college-ruled paper, Uniball Signo 207 .7mm pens, and mostly his keyboard. A good day is spent taking pictures, mailing things, making the words convey the precise meaning, driving, and singing.
