Review by Rachel Jablonski
Just in time for the holidays, Chris Caffery Music Man. A strange mix of traditional Christmas songs, original music with Christmas themes, and a completely unfitting track with a more negative spin called “Pisses Me Off,” the puzzling album is seemingly meant to be a work with a holiday twist preparing audiences for next Caffery release. Since 1981 Caffery has performed on at least seventeen albums. Music Man being his first of two solo releases to come out in late 2004, Caffery is first revealing himself through a somewhat festive outlet.
Exclusive to this album is the original track called “Christmas Is.” The track is soft and gentle, nauseatingly so, like one would expect a Christmas song to be. The song flows well with clear vocals, piano parts, and acoustic guitar, but even as the lyrical content follows traditional holiday messages, the presentation is weak. On the other hand, the recreation of one of the more powerful and traditional Christmas songs, “What Child Is This?” is a creative interpretive mix that does the song justice through electric guitar, piano, and other instrument accompaniments.
“Music Man,” “Pisses Me Off,” “and “Abandoned” are previews of songs that will also appear on the full-length Caffery album called Faces. These tracks are the better songs on the album sounding less forced than their Christmassy conflictions. With a harder edge, the tracks seem to fit a style more natural to Caffery. “Pisses Me Off” consists of a series of seemingly sarcastic, humorous, and negative ramblings, and Starbucks pisses me off five bucks a cup what the fuck is up, giving audiences a flavor of the full-length solo release.
With a strange mix containing everything from positive Christmas songs to more downbeat tracks, I contend from what I have heard on Music Man that Caffery should have stuck to only releasing his full-length solo debut. (Faces will be reviewed on the site soon).