Michael Draine's Twisted Vista
Michael Mantler/Edward Gorey
The Hapless Child and Other Inscrutable Tales
(ECM)
Despite author/illustrator Edward Gorey’s
eminence in American popular culture, Michael
Mantler’s inspired treatment of Gorey’s darkly
comic poetry has eluded the audience it
deserves. Performed by a stellar ensemble
featuring Robert Wyatt on vocals, Carla Bley
on keyboards, Terje Rypdal on electric guitar,
Stephen Swallow on bass guitar, and Jack
DeJohnette on drums, The Hapless Child
clocks in at an utterly enthralling 34
minutes. Wyatt is startlingly well-cast, with a
thick British accent redolent of the macabre,
his airy, high-register quail suddenly shifting		Music Review Index
into a chilling tremelo. In hindsight, Gorey’s
themes of child exploitation and Victorian
decadence dovetail neatly with Wyatt’s
anti-imperial politics. (In a late ‘80s
interview in OPTION, Mantler expressed
frustration with the fact that Wyatt’s con-
tribution to Mantler’s Many Have No Speech
was curtailed by Wyatt’s refusal to recite any
poetry he considered politically incorrect.)
Bley wrests an array of fearful atmospheres
from her analog string synthesizer, while
Rypdal’s stinging leads seethe with an air of
encroaching disaster. Mantler’s sweeping,
cinematic arrangements may be the most
rock-oriented work of a career spanning jazz
and classical composition. A perusal of the
1972 book Amphigorey (in which the
six tales are collected) reveals the artist’s own
illustrations as but pale shadows of the dire
imagery these musical interpretations conjure
in the listener’s inner eye. Though currently
out of print in the U.S., the German edition is
still available.
http://www.ecmrecords.de