Music reviews. CD reviews. Critically hip!

I'm not used to hearing the kind of music I heard on Jennifer Gentle's new album The Midnight Room but that's for a good reason. Initially I was excited to hear something that had been described as the kind of music you'd hear in a haunted amusement park. But what I ended up hearing was a contrived body of work, too messy to really be taken seriously. The "haunted" aspect was irritating but The Midnight Room threw me off for several reasons.

First of all I assumed that Jennifer Gentle was a girl. But alas, it's the name of a band comprised by two Italian guys. To make matters more confusing, this album was actually only made by one member of the band, Marco Fasolo. I read that he recorded it in a space where a previous tenant was said to have shot himself dead. So, yes, Fasolo holed himself up in a place with a creepy past to try and tap into some deep stuff. And, no, it didn't work.

Fasolo went overboard. There are occasional cackles and kazoo noises throughout the CD which just sound silly and carelessly placed in the songs. These random sounds, and sometimes random pauses, made me wonder if a child had possessed Fasolo and not the ghost he may have been hoping for. I will admit that some of the music is convincingly creepy. For instance, I don't think I could handle listening to The Midnight Room while driving at night on a desolate highway. Nor would I suspect that doing psychedelic drugs as an accompaniment to this supposedly "psychedelic" music would produce desired results. But frankly this album sounds like a slightly more sophisticated version of one of those "Spooky Sounds for Halloween" CD's: they're mostly hokey but occasionally help the atmosphere of a haunted house. Take the song Granny's House: it's made up of clanking chains and a moaning melody. There is a 10 second pause in the middle of the song which sounds like he just ran out of things to bang on and then more chains.

Another thing that's eerie about this album is that a few of the songs don't seem to fit in at all. On a few tracks Jennifer Gentle reminds me of simple 50's pop with a dash of crazy. Take My Hand, for example, is cute but also sort of bizarre. With it's nasal vocals and funky harmonies it sounds like something the Adams family would sing. This song as well as The Ferryman were the only thing that I remotely enjoyed on the album even if at times they were a little bizarre. These songs were at least a little catchy.

Overall I didn't get a real sense of what Fasolo was trying to do. And though I'm not quite sure what he had in mind, it didn't work. While I give him credit for trying to be inventive, I cannot take this album seriously. Perhaps the "Midnight Room" should be sealed off with every copy of the album locked inside.