Media Lion

Rating: 5.5

This album was fine to listen to, and it’s nice branching out some- however, it’s not an album that I would revisit, or even listen to individual songs from it again in the future (at least not a recording of it). The album felt like it needed to be accompanied by something like a play or a movie, or simply be listened to in a live setting. Perhaps because it is so outside of my typical listening, a lot of the album kind of blended together- I listened to the last song, and Spotify continued to play similar music, and I did not notice until 3-4 songs after (also perhaps I just don’t have an ear for music, especially like this). I was not a huge fan of the gospel-y (unsure of if that is an accurate description) nature of it, and you can definitely tell it is post Catholicism conversion for Mary Lou Williams (read on Wikipedia)- I would be interested in listening to some of her previous work, perhaps minus the spiritual influence. All in all, I felt this was a just okay album, I wasn’t clawing at my ears while listening to it, but I also am not dying to dive into more of her work.

The Devil was my favorite song, I enjoyed the baritone(?) singing the most, as well as the harmonizing. Lyrically I enjoyed the shout out to Mephistopheles (diablo enjoyers?), and in general I enjoyed the ‘chorus’ (would you call it that?):

The Devil never rests, come day, come dusk, come dawn
You compromise and wind up sold in parts
So don’t it strike you funny when you look him in the eye?
The Devil looks a lot like you and I

The Devil, Mary Lou Williams

Specifically I liked the ‘You compromise and wind up sold in parts’ in the last chorus (with the background ‘ahhhhhhhs’). This track not having any instruments (or very little) was something I enjoyed a lot, I definitely felt like a lot of the tracks were kind of all over the place on the piano which was a little jarring.

For me, my least favorite was a tie between Anima Christi & A Fungus Amungus. In Anima Christi, I specifically disliked the back-up singers (help help!) – they just sounded out of place to me and completely killed the vibe of the song. Without that, I think this would’ve been a contender for my favorite. A Fungus Amungus just felt like a fever dream, discordant, all over the place. At some points it sounded like someone just banging away on the piano, or maybe one person playing a song, while another smashes keys on a different piano.