REVIEW: the scoldees, My Pathetic Life (Spinning Plates)
- Paul Andersen
Like a breeze blowing into Manhattan from Long Island, the music of the scoldees will pick you up and take you away from your cares, the way an old friend you haven't talked to in awhile might cheer you up. In fact, the scoldees -- Nancy Sirianni, Jack Hoffmann, John Collis and Ted Rydzewski -- are four self-described best friends whose musical paths have finally coalesced into a whole. The result is an organic sound and feel that is the 180 degree opposite of the standard industry-manufactured slickness that permeates much of the airwaves.
If Sirianni's name strikes a bell, it is because she has been an irregular feature on the Howard Stern show, doing musical parodies and suffering Stern insults. Here, however, she displays a voice that some may initially compare to Natalie Merchant, yet about three songs in, its timbre and phrasing become hers solely. Yet the nice thing about this album is that no one scoldee predominates. Some songs ("Cellophane Man" and others) feature Hoffman's lead vocals, and the harmonies are always dead on - in fact, the four initially got together to work on choral arrangements of Christmas carols!
Throughout this album, the melodies and lyrics match up in such a way as to reverberate in the brain, with a catchiness amongst the hooks that just screams 'radio airplay.' In fact, this disc is doing amazingly well with programmers, who have latched onto "All I Want" as the chosen first single, making them stars in such places as Hot Springs, Arkansas and Roswell, New Mexico. It's a momentum that just might cause My Pathetic Life to come out of left field in the larger markets, also.
With their simple adult acoustic-rock sound and superb songwriting abilities, the scoldees are the antithesis to rap/metal, boy bands, teen girl angst and all those other entities that make up millennial radio. Hopefully, there will be a place in the scheme of things for four old friends making honest music, too.
