Over the course of their incredible 27-year career, Sun City Girls seemed to make a point of doing everything as triumphantly and aggressively wrong as possible, precluding any possibility of widespread acceptance. While they certainly recorded their share of awesome psychedelic jams and inspired ethnic music appropriations over the years, their anarchic sense of humor and love of absurdist theatrics resulted in an accompanying avalanche of baffling and wildly self-indulgent work as well. Of course, that eccentric unpredictability and willingness to try literally anything was central to their charm. Consequently, Funeral Mariachi makes the most fitting of swan-songs, as they’ve finally done the most unexpected thing of all: made an album of very listenable, melodic songs.
Sun City Girls effectively ceased being an entity on February 19th, 2007, when long-time drummer Charles Gocher died from cancer.Although he was present for the recording of Funeral Mariachi, it seems like he may have passed away before the album fully took shape (which goes a long way towards explaining why it took another three years for it to be finished).While the percussion is certainly quite spare and understated throughout, the more telling indicator is that this album is quite languid and melancholy.There is a deep sadness to Funeral Mariachi that feels more like an elegy to a dying or departed friend than anything resembling a "normal" session by three of the most willfully obtuse guys around.Besides, Gocher always seemed more aggressively bizarre than the Bishop brothers–it is difficult to imagine him not sabotaging the album's more sublime or muted moments with surreal stream-of-consciousness beat poetry or a Japanese theater interlude or something if he'd seen the project through to completion.
I bet Gocher had quite a bit of influence on the opening piece though, as "Ben's Radio" begins and ends with crazy cut-up sounding falsetto vocals in a real or imagined foreign language.After that though, and some periodically shrill warbling, most of the Girls' more inaccessible quirks disappear completely.Even so, the album is still deeply aberrant (how could it be otherwise?), but the weirdness is confined largely to chants, foreign language vocals, unusual influences, and eclectic instrumentation in the service of fairly coherent, flowing, and melodic songs.The Girls definitely borrow from a very wide palette stylistically, effortlessly tossing out allusions to traditional Arabic music, spaghetti western themes, flamenco, and Indonesian pop, yet it rarely feels forced or clumsy.Of course, it probably helps that Gocher and the Bishops enlisted some very talented guests to help them out– it is difficult to imagine the ghostly "Black Orchid" working nearly as well without Jessika Kenney's ethno-vocal pyrotechnics or "Funeral Mariachi" without David Carter's smoldering trumpet.
Uncharacteristically, it is very difficult to point to a clear highlight on this album, as there is pretty much nothing half-baked here.I am hard-pressed to think of another Sun City Girls album that is this focused and uniformly good.Notably, however, there is one song that could almost be a successful single of sorts, as "This Is My Name" has a pleasant English-language melody, an excellent laid-back groove, and some awesome raga-influenced riffing from Richard Bishop.In fact, Richard is in dazzling form throughout the whole album, tackling No Wave skronking ("Ben's Radio"), finger-twisting Eastern modes, sublime shimmering, Satie-esque piano miniatures, and Ennio Morricone twang with equal deftness and tact.
It's pretty hard to imagine anyone being disappointed by this album, though longtime fans may be surprised at how sane, sincere, and non-ragged it all sounds.Sun City Girls have made a comparatively accessible album, sure, but the only real difference is that band decided to apply their freewheeling kitchen-sink eclecticism to songs with strong melodies rather than allowing that strangeness to be an end unto itself.Their individuality remains quite firmly intact, but they've made it a bit easier for the rest of the world understand what all the fuss was about.Funeral Mariachi is the sound of a singular band riding off into the sunset with an unexpected amount of grace and emotional resonance–a clichéd metaphor for sure, but one that is warranted by the album's very conspicuous Morricone influence, I'm afraid.This is definitely one of the best things Sun City Girls have ever recorded.
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