PRICE:
$13.50$11.48
IN STOCK
ARTIST
TITLE
Seasonal Depression Suite
FORMAT
CD

LABEL
CATALOG #
DC 894CD DC 894CD
GENRE
RELEASE DATE
11/17/2023

"Drag City presents its first-ever Christmas/Holiday album -- Neil Hamburger Presents Seasonal Depression Suite. This song-cycle is filtered through the lens of various guests stuck in a perfectly average chain-hotel during the holiday season, wallowing in self-pity and paranoia, re-living personal catastrophes both real and imagined, or simply trying to use the hotel vending machine. Influenced by everything from Thom Bell to Tommy to the troll-ish misery of Trip Advisor reviews, Seasonal Depression Suite provides another entry in the sprawling satirical critique of America that Greg Turkington has been engaged in with his multifarious enterprises and collaborations since the early '90s. The musical tapestry woven by Turkington and Erik Paparozzi draws from the stage musicals, pop vocal albums, film scores, rock concept albums, new wave mini-masterpieces, and singer-songwriter epics that have captured their imaginations since childhood, in pitch-perfect support of their fictitious hotel guests and their tormented concerns. To sing these parts, a once-in-a-lifetime all-star cast was assembled -- including Neil Finn (Split Enz, Crowded House, Fleetwood Mac), Annabella Lwin (Bow Wow Wow), Alan Bishop (Sun City Girls), Bonnie 'Prince' Billy, acclaimed singer/performance artist Puddles Pity Party, voice actress Natalie Peyser, J.P. Hasson (Pleaseeasaur), enigmatic vocalist (and Frank Sinatra's granddaughter) A.J. Lambert, Paparozzi himself and, of course, Neil Hamburger. Among the many musicians accompanying the cast were Scarlet Rivera, Danny Heifetz (Mr. Bungle), Bär McKinnon (Mr. Bungle), Prairie Prince (The Tubes), Atom Ellis (Dieselhed), Jason Schimmel (Secret Chiefs 3), and Alex Jules (The Monkees band) -- an international assemblage whose talents give Seasonal Depression Suite its epic sweep. With all hands-on board, Turkington and Paparozzi created their own kind of masterpiece, like Sinatra's late-period concept album Watertown fused with the misfit comedy of Neil Hamburger -- a work that looks at a cast of characters both ordinary and bizarre, as they make their way from one grievance to another, traveling from place to place, hoping to live, while waiting to die. There won't be another album like Seasonal Depression Suite anytime soon -- if ever."