OFFICIAL: http://elliotschneidermusic.com/
Written
by Raymond Burris, posted by blog admin
Don’t
Put All Your Eggs in One Basketcase is an album that could have only come from
one songwriter. You’ll realize that after a single spin through the eleven
songs constituting Elliot Schneider’s latest solo release. It’s the latest
milestone in a long career that’s largely ran undercover, yet brushed up
against icons and historical moments in popular music’s history. It’s also one
more in a series of intensely personal musical statements that have come from this
fecund musical imagination since Schneider retired from his role as an educator
and devoted his creative energies, once again, to new music. The stories of a
lifetime, the triumphs and losses along the way, these are some of the
essential ingredients of Elliot Schneider’s songwriting on Don’t Put All Your
Eggs in One Basketcase and the confident spark of the unusual twists many of
the tracks in an idiosyncratic direction that marks these tunes as all his own.
Some
of the best numbers on the album have an uptempo pace that never hurries
Schneider. There’s a steady stream of energy pouring off the opener “The Moon
Has Flown Away” and it has a friendly spirit surrounding the music despite some
rather downbeat lyrical content. Schneider’s talents, as evidenced by the
quality of the imagery and overall writing for this tune. “Lost on the Radio” is a superbly focused rock
track alternating between airy guitars and some incendiary lead work during the
solo. Schneider and his collaborators prove more than once on this album to be
rather expert at delivering uptempo, yet considered and melodic, AOR tracks
that gain much from his evolved lyrical presence and idiosyncratic yet emotive
vocals. “Captain Argent” is an even more ideal example of that locking a little
more tightly on Schneider’s melodic bent than the preceding tune. The track “Are
We Only Dinosaurs?” features the strongest instance of Schneider’s quirky humor
on display with this new collection. There’s some pathos in the lyrics as well
and the guitar really brings an understated flair to the song with its
invocation of traditional rock and roll six string tropes. The little staccato
flurry coming with each bar may not seem like anything much initially, but adds
a low-key colorful exclamation point on the song.
He
unleashes some improbably rugged guitar muscle on the workout “A Key to You”
and this radio edit of a longer version packs plenty of punch for widespread
airplay and is sure to garner favor with fans of heavy guitar rock. “Surreal
Survivor” is a re-imagining of a track from earlier in Schneider’s solo career
and this version here adopts some of the same guitar-centric attributes of the
earlier song, but it’s a much more artful and dynamic mix here with lyrics that
come off much more vulnerable and personal. It does have quite an assertive
edge, however, at points throughout the track. “I Just Don’t Really Know If You
Exist” is a well crafted and utterly bizarre ending for the studio album and
has a remarkably normal texture despite the unsettled feeling coming through
the lyrics and, occasionally, the music. The remaining songs on Don’t Put All
Your Eggs in One Basketcase are pulled from various points during Schneider’s
musical life prior to this album. There’s a ragged but right cover of the
golden oldie “Poison Ivy”, a promising demo for a song entitled “Hopelessness
(Resist Paralysis)”, and a delightful
acoustic track from a 1982 rehearsal called “Any Angel Can Have Me” that
deserve the bulk of listener’s attention. They are a nice, though utterly
non-essential, addition to the package for casual listeners, but anyone who’s
encountering Schneider’s work for the first time and curious about what a major
league talent like this has been doing all these years will find their
inclusion quite illuminating. Don’t Put All Your Eggs into One Basketcase is a
powerful and wildly imaginative clinic both from a performing and songwriting
perspective.
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