THE SLOW POISONERS: Melodrama

The Slow Poisoners

Melodrama

© 2004 The Slow Poisoners (633913996827)

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A surrealistic rock and roll band who's made a garage-country concept album. Likened to a marriage of David Bowie and Johnny Cash.

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notes

Following an over-indulgence of absinthe and snails in the shadow of the Eiffel Tower on his 26th birthday, Andrew Poisoner received a surrealistic vision of flaming rock and roll: an infernal marriage of David Bowie and Johnny Cash, gothic theatrics and roots music, beat poetry and a distortion box.

Nearly a decade later, the Slow Poisoners (Mr. Poisoner and goggled drumming dynamo Foxx Trott) are stronger and stranger than ever. They tour the nation regularly and have released albums on a variety of independent labels. Their latest CD, Melodrama, is a garage-country concept album on their own Rocktopus! Records imprint.

Some Historical Highlights:

In 2004, the Slow Poisoners are invited to perform in the cornfields of Paducah, Kentucky, where nude male dancers spontaneously join them onstage.

In 2003, a Southwestern tour exposes the band to feral prarie dogs and leather-masked accordionists. The tour also confirms the status of Lubbock, Texas, as the most rockin' town on earth. 2003 also sees the release of the band's second full-length recording, Days Of The Soft Break on Heyday Records.

In 2002, the band records at the legendary Sun Studios in Memphis, Tennessee. The engineer assures Foxx that he will not smack him in the groin.

In 2001, Foxx passes a kidney stone and writes a novel while the band records at Jackpot! Studio in Portland, Oregon.

In 2000, the Slow Poisoners perform on the Warped Tour, as an opener for Dick Dale, on the steps of San Francisco City Hall, and in a laundromat. The laundromat is judged to be the best show.

In 1999, Andrew wears nothing but flyers as he testifies before the San Francisco Board Of Supervisors against a proposed leafletting ban. Also, the first Slow Poisoners full-length recording, Great Spiders And Diamond Powder, is released on PopSmear Records.

reviews

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  • An excellent look back at the Poisoner tradition without regressing.
    author: Cliff Anthony

    Andrew Poisoner is in love and that is a damn good thing for all of us. With the release of the latest Slow Poisoners album, Melodrama, Mr. Poisoner and Foxx Trott serve up a healthy collection of mental imagery and soothing tunes that at times take a turn or two and snap your head clean off. Whether Andrew is in love or not is really not the point, but the life behind a statement like that is as close as you can get to a full description of this latest work without putting it on and falling backwards through the melodies and mental meanderings that have come to represent all things Poisoner. With Melodrama, the band manages to give a solid look back to their days when Great Spiders and Diamond Powder threatened the charts of the mind except that the entire production aesthetic of Melodrama is the polar opposite of that elaborate debut. Things like this are possible when you are talking about the Poisoners and if you have never heard them you won't understand. Those of you nodding in agreement are the ones also shrugging in wonder that the band can continue to put out such adventurous blends of paradox while never losing their tight lock on the ever changing, yet familiar sound and feel of the band. Coming well past the days of "Strange Things Happening," Melodrama winds a darker path through a more flowery, almost hippie feel that smacks of a dreamy kid enamored with his own very existence and then smacks you in the face. The contrast between the sweet and soothing sounds of songs like "Starflower Pine" and "Subway Serenade" are jolted into perspective with the older "He Who Gets Slapped" and the newer "Curtains!" One moment you are looking at clouds on a sunny day and the next you are stunned to realize that the evil man with the mustache has managed to tie you to the railroad tracks while you searched out familiar shapes above. The pounding, rhythmic sound of the locomotive coming lulls you back to sleep in an oddly familiar sense of redemption without virtue. The music is plain, but not boring and seems rooted in something far more base than music, but the Poisoners never fall all the way into the traditional, even though the record closes with "This Little Light of Mine" and boasts the church-worthy--it would have to be just the right church!--"She Loved the Stars too Fondly to be Fearful of the Night." At times you get the feeling that the Poisoners are just letting the songs fall out of the natural space in which they live and then you wonder if they aren't more the masters of the genres they so freely blend and bend. When all is said and done, it just feels like you can trust that what you are about to let in your head has been tested and proven safe for consumption. The songs seem so right that you forget to ask if they were carefully made in a lab or if they were found laying in the grass down by the seashore. The record is peppered with a strong Gaslighter Theatre feel (hence the name of course) and several skits draw the listener in and through the flickering light of film and theatre before sound; quite an achievement for an all-audio endeavor. With ragtime interludes and transitions that spin between being so jarring that your drop you keys and so soothing that you feel like you are being given anything you want, Melodrama proves that the Poisoners have managed a magic that may well be their undoing. Their successful paradox is perhaps the only thing keeping them from mainstream acceptance, yet listening to the record would draw in even the most conventional music fan. Again with the paradox. The point is, Melodrama manages to push the Poisoner envelope further while keeping it clear that there is so much more to come; and that is a damn good thing for all of us.

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