Ted Minsky is actually Anne Grabow. Why has Anne Grabow chosen such a masculine moniker? Who is Anne Grabow? Who, for that matter, is Angelika Koehlermann? That's like asking who Betty Crocker is. Someone. Anyone. No one. And in the end, does it matter? What evidence can we glean from the press release? Nothing important, it seems, except that Ted Minsky is described alternately as a "young costume designer" and as a "super-architect" leading us "to the borders of pop music." This is pure hyperbole, I'm afraid.Angelika Koehlermann
Ms. Minsky/Grabow's musical travesty Madame Le Ted sounds something like a lobotomized Bjork recording songs onto a faulty four-track in a public bathroom stall. The dimly realized melodies and poorly mixed vocals are covered up with a bland palette of factory-preset distortion effects. The vocals are of the world-weary chanteuse, I-can't-be-bothered-to-actually-sing style. The lyrics are in a confounding combination of German, Spanish, and English. What shall we call this hybrid? Gerspanglish? Spangermlish? How about "annoying"? It's like a series of idiosyncratic in-jokes that nobody actually gets, not even Minsky herself. Songs with names like "Who Will Hold My Boobs?" promise humor and irony, but deliver only detached weirdness. Ted Minsky has an obsession with her own bodily self-image, which is explicated in the song "Proportional." This plays like a musical version of the comic strip Cathy. The desire to turn this music off is nearly irresistible. I think I'm going to give in.
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