People's choice: Escape the everyday grind

Folkskunde

 Some days you just don't feel like going to work. You wake up in the morning, and maybe for no particular reason at all, you just can't find the strength to head out into the world. It's normal. Most of us don't love our jobs.

On the off chance that you do, you still need a break from the routine. If you don't take a break mistakes happen. That's why every now and then a defective car comes off the line, the deli person screws up your sandwich, a barista makes a crappy latte, you forget to read a memo, I write a lousy review.

That's life. So be it. That's what makes us people– no one's a machine and no one's perfect. Even when the world makes you feel like you have to be perfect, you have to remember that perfection doesn't exist. Comfort lies in finding beauty in imperfections.

That brings me to Folkskunde, or "people's client," as it is loosely translated from the German. If you, the everyday person, are looking for a break from the stress of everyday living, I suggest you look no further. This CD, bound by a burlap sack, is a bag of magic dust that can take you outside yourself and into a world that you may have forgotten was there while you pounded out those 40-plus hours a week.

Just as the chorus to the opening track, "W.A.S.P.," states, "You awake to find an epidemic not unlike every other day / You awake to find that you are sick in every other way."

These folks, a six-man outfit of bass, keys, drums, and three guitarists, including Poetry Lounge founder Tucker Duncan, are the people's client because they are the people's escape from rigidity, formula, and predictability. They are retro-pop that snags elements from every crevice of the underground. This is music being made by people in tune with people... more importantly, in tune with themselves.

Clever irony is abundant in the song writing, such as, "I went out alone and I left me at home," or "She never met a boy who could tell her she was ugly / On the other hand, nobody's saying she's pretty."

That irony is pervasive in the musicianship as well. At times the jams are tightly woven psychedelic knots, at other times they resemble broken glass fallen in the shape of the object it once was.

Folkskunde is rarity in local recorded music. It's daring and most importantly, it's fun, a nice break from the monotony of all this hard core jazz that has gotten to be a little bit out of control.

Folkskunde
ALBUM COVER

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