(From Dusted Magazine)
Observations about his rate of output are well-worn territory, but still: This is the second Dan Melchior LP in six months. While the noisy, deconstructed Assemblage Blues was a deviation from Melchior’s typically more song-oriented body of work, the fact remains that keeping up with the man’s releases can start to feel like a part-time job. None of Melchior’s albums are bad by any stretch of the imagination, but it’s becoming increasingly difficult to deny the possibility that we’ve reached Peak Melchior.
Which isn’t to say that his albums run together: When compared to Melchior’s widely-distributed releases from the past couple of years, Catbirds & Cardinals is less byzantine and jammy than Thankyou Very Much, less obscured by fuzz thanObscured By Fuzz, less abrasive than Assemblage Blues, and its pop sensibility is finer tuned than Visionary Pangs. If that seems confusing, or if you stopped reading halfway through the previous sentence, then you’ll understand why it’s hard to recommend Catbirds & Cardinals on its own terms. Sure, this is a fine piece of pop songcraft with influences from the Barrett-Richman-Knox continuum, but Melchior’s catalog has reached a size where it’s impossible to tell which albums to recommend over any other.
