Michael Fracasso - World In a Drop of Water
Bohemia Beat Records
1001 S. Josephine St., Denver, CO, 80209 3
03-744-1782
shubobeat@earthlink.net
Rounder Records distribution



"Austin artist Michael Fracasso has put out some fine music prior to this release, but World In a Drop of Water makes such a major move forward for his music that it's as if he has become a new artist with this as his debut release. Some of that forward motion must be attributed to Charlie Sexton whose production and playing on this recording work in such sympathy and with Fracasso's songs that it's as if Sexton has been the missing link which would suddenly make Fracasso's style jump and bristle with a whole new energy and ingenuity. If Fracasso's previous When I Lived in the Wild was a solid effort of moderate reach, World In a Drop of Water is a solid effort of imposing reach. The ideas that went into the sound and execution of this recording were far beyond ordinary, and for the vast majority of the recording, they worked better than even Fracasso and Sexton must have imagined them working.

This time out Fracasso wasn't afraid to let his influences show. The two most notable ones are Buddy Holly and John Lennon. Holly had always been noticeable as a source for Fracasso, but the Lennon element is new, and Sexton sets a listener up for it slowly but surely. First he lets Fracasso roll with an updated Buddy Holly sound for a couple of songs. Using Holly's technique of creating immediately catchy verse sections which slide into equally catchy choruses, Fracasso effortlessly runs through two fast numbers charged with solid pop hooks, Byrds-style electric twelve string guitar sounds, and a bevy of quick bursts of sounds which keep them just unpredictable enough to avoid fitting too neatly into a listener's expectations. The closest current link to Fracasso's style on these two opening cuts is Bill Lloyd, but with Sexton's production working on the textures, Fracasso moves just enough beyond Lloyd that his pop establishes new boundaries. On the third cut, "Jar of Pennies," Fracasso slides to a slower beat to work a darkly-tinged ballad with a touch of Roy Orbison surfacing both in the melodic structure and Fracasso's vocal work. Fans of Fracasso will know this style since it's one which anchored much of his previous work, and perhaps that's why Sexton chose to use it to introduce briefly the Lennon influence which won't surface until later. As the song rolls along, Fracasso takes its ballad structure and injects very brief, almost dissonant pieces which again disrupt any predictability. Then it happens - the strings enter, an alternately lush, dark, and disruptive force which sounds for all the world like a strings section the Beatles might have employed once they determined the power of strings to alter their pop moments and give them depth. So as not to make this Beatles' reference too dominant, Sexton tosses in a batch of quick other sounds, letting each attack and retreat like the tactics of some revolutionary military group. By the end of "Jar of Pennies," though, it's obvious that this is not just yo
Sexton have bigger fish to fry.

Fracasso then returns to his pop sound on the recording's catchiest song, "Started On the Wrong Foot." With its chugging beat propelled by a Hammond B3, more Byrds-like guitar work, and the steady thump of the drums, it sets up still another reference point, this time Tom Petty. Fracasso's voice here works much like Petty's, only at a higher register, and with Petty's love for Byrds-style pop, it's not hard to picture Petty covering this tune. So when Fracasso moves into the slower, steady drive of the next two songs, "Changed Your Mind" and "Gold," the transition makes sense. These two develop from simple acoustic set-ups, minor-keyed at times and designed to let electric guitar leads come in effectively with muted strength and dark tension. Both good songs, they let Fracasso mine that middle ground of rock somewhere between its catchiest pop and its darkest moments of tension. What Fracasso and Sexton do next is interesting; after having just established through six songs how textured and diverse the sound could be, they back up to a more elemental simplicity. Sexton provides some baritone guitar and acoustic lap steel work to a nice rolling melody line so that the energy implicit in the melody gets pushed with only that acoustic backing, taking the basic style Fracasso has always used and defining it through a more unique, effective setting. If one song capsulizes what Michael Fracasso has done well in the past, this is it.

And that's when it happens. Fracasso and Sexton set loose on two successive numbers, "Our Finest Hour" and "World In a Drop of Water," and enter the realm of John Lennon. Both fine songs, they each move in segments, some exceptionally melodic and some deliberately dissonant. The segments are brief, the dissonance abrupt and swift, and the building of internal tension sure-handed. Lennon loved to take a standard musical progression and disrupt it momentarily by injecting a chord or sequence which wasn't at all expected, and Fracasso does that brilliantly here. Sexton then provides the sounds, from those strings which weave in with dark lushness to guitar tones which both sound familiar and surprisingly at odds with the more melodic segments. The textures develop with grace and menace, always intriguing and ultimately fitting to the lines they are following and accenting. And when Fracasso injects just a piece of the Kinks into the title song with his reference to "so tired of waiting," the full range of where he and Sexton have been heading this whole time becomes clearly visible.

World In a Drop of Water ends with two more folk-based songs. "Marie" is again a nicely rolling melody where Fracasso plays with his vocal presentation a bit, dropping from time to time to a lower register to give a hint of desperate darkness to the story line. "Sleep Becomes You" is basically a lullaby, but just the instrumentation tells everything about how far Fracasso and Sexton planned to go. While Fracasso sings and plays his acoustic, Sexton adds bass guitars, four-note piano, and plucked cello. Additionally, a harmony bass adds to the deep textures being explored under that tinkling four-note piano, and a pedal steel adds a droning dreaminess to the mix. A lullaby with the most unlikely accompaniment, it fits a song in which lost love and lost chances reflect in the sleep of a woman.

World In a Drop of Water lives up to its name. There is a clarity to Fracasso's melodies and visions which do exhibit a desire for innocence, but his adherence to honest observations requires more than simple innocence can provide. Somehow Michael Fracasso and Charlie Sexton have figured out how to inject a wealth of textures, tones, and opposing forces into the "drops of water" Fracasso's songs are. This is an inspired work, driven equally by Fracasso with his intelligent songwriting and emotionally-charged vocals and Sexton's vision of what sounds could match both the intelligence and emotion of Fracasso's songs. Its links to several of the better rock writers of the past are clear, but by no means is anything here derivative. This is Michael Fracasso and what he does being presented better than ever. Credit Charlie Sexton for the second part of that statement. By all means, though, understand that Michael Fracasso is an artist whose talent and writing abilities warrant that kind of inventive presentation."

Martin Fullington ~ Music Reviews Quarterly


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