Jona Bechtolt's latest record, I Believe In You, Your Magic Is Real, the unauthorized audio joint biography about David Copperfield and Yo-Yo Man Tommy Smothers of the Smothers Brothers, came packaged to press-type people with a foot-long magic wand. I believed in that wand. I used it to try and perform all sorts of garden variety, household magic, but it never made the spaghetti water boil any faster than I thought it should, it never made the phone ring with good news and it never convinced Joanna Newsom to materialize out of thing air so we could enjoy a coffee and a stimulating conversation before she had to get back to writing another masterpiece. The magic was most definitely not as real as it could have been. The disappointment didn't extend to the contents of the album, which is phat with beats and loveable quirks that come from a mind full of stuffs and things, a perpetual channel-surfing whirligig, a tropical storm with a sunny, less violent disposition. These are tunes that Adam Green and The Moldy Peaches could have written were crack and knee-jerk, sensational humor not so much a part of the appeal, though there's a place for all of that as well. Bechtolt is no longer one half of the band The Blow, choosing instead to forge out on his own - this fall sharing a tour with the mystical Dirty Projectors. Here, he rhapsodizes about jellies that were used to heal wounds back in the day and explains - in David Lynch's own words - why the filmmaker's not a enlightened filmmaker, but just a guy from Missoula, Montana, trying to do his thing. The readings carry a sort of cartoonish playfulness with them and it seems to be a common lace between this and his everyday work. It's invigorating his mind over matter philosophies. - Sean Moeller
From Bechtolt: "OK, so I read from two Davids, David Lynch's Catching The Big Fish (Tarcher) and David Shrigley's Worried Noodles (Tomlab). There isn't any conscious connection or theme I was going for, but who knows what's in there."
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