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It is an all too rare and precious kind of sound that reminds the listener how it was to be a child. It's even more rare when that sound can, in the same stroke, feel both immediate and new, suited in resonances that go beyond simple reminiscence and into revelation. And yet, with 'The Garden of Scissors,' the second full-length album from American composer Jeffrey Butzer from Lona Records, there is no single phrase among its 26 songs that does not radiate some wonderfully strange light.
Taking off from where his acclaimed first record 'She Traded Her Leg' began, Jeffrey continues in his knack for the infectious melodic heart that makes up the backbone of his compositions, elucidating each therein with his impressive array of instrumentation including piano, accordion, organ, melodica, guitar, and more. Also notable is the addition of the beautiful vocals of Sanni Baumgartner of Dancer vs Politican on several tracks, whose incantatory German intoning gifts the record with a sultry mystique that in collaboration with Butzer's masterful layering become reminiscent of both Serge Gainsbourg and Ennio Morricone.
Composed as a soundtrack for an also Butzer-penned screenplay of the same name, 'The Garden of Scissors' throughout maintains, by turns, tones of Jeunet, Cocteau, and Tati. At times delicate and enchanting as on 'Broken Clock Waltz,' other times more evocative of the haunted or surreal, as with the album's brilliant noir-Western-tinged second act in four pieces, titled 'Suit of Flies,' the whole of the album remains end-to-end enchanted, stuffed for every inch with light "light that might open doors inside your body" light that will surely, in time, make you young.
Lona Records
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