Special to NewsLink & It's A Queer Thang

"Pout" by Flipping the Pig, 2006

Don't let the first track fool you or else you'll have plenty of reasons to have a long face. Flipping The Pig's latest release “Pout” is a brilliant exercise in genre-bending. From the call and response choral cacophony of opener “Spoon Fed” to the rueful piano waltz of “Break” and the creepiest stalker song this side of Plus Minus or The Police (“Hide And Seek”). Principal 'Pig Jeffery Mansk's vocal rasp is warmly reminiscent of Lou Reed or Yo La Tengo's Ira Kaplan and the album only gets warmer as it goes on. I would be inclined to call the first and second tracks (the MIDI driven “Spoon Fed” and the creepy “Hide and Seek”) a fake out because once you get through those, you are ready for anything “Pout” has left to offer. The real gems come later. Because Mansk jumps stylistically between each song it is difficult to pinpoint or pigeonhole Flipping The Pig. The jumps between songs such as “Pleeeeease” and “O Gd” feel natural, even welcome like you're meeting different characters to a greater story until it's “5AM” and it's time to “make it through another day.”

You can buy the album at www.flippingthepig.com

About the reviewer:

S. James Curtis is a Peterborough, Canada based writer who has written reviews for The Resin and The Charlatan, both based at Carleton University. His chapbooks "Scientific Breakdown" and "A Long Line Of Short Disappointments" as well as the forthcoming "Quarter Century Crisis" are published by Dusty Owl (www.dustyowl.com). Curtis is also a musician, being the driving force behind musical project The Brilliant Void (www.myspace.com/brilliantvoid). He's 25, single, and doesn't know a thing about those medical experiments, no sir, not one thing.