The Musicgoer: Gobble Gobble's Neon Graveyard

GOBBLE GOBBLE
Neon Graveyard
(independent)
**** (out of 5)

Either Cecil Frena (aka Gobble Gobble) is obsessed with death and decay, or else he just needs a whole lot of moisturizer. The songs on the Edmonton musician’s new album Neon Graveyard are filled with references to fountains of ashes, piles of salt, bones, acorns, windstorms of dust, unwatered lawns, sunburns, scars. There’s even a song called “O Sacred Dandruff” which Frena croons to the flaking skin on his knuckles “puckering up in blistered curds.”

Not that you’d be able to make out what Frena is saying without the accompanying lyrics sheet — his voice is run through so many filters, it’s as if you’re listening to someone play you a bad tape recording of someone whispering through megaphone over your cellphone. It’s the voice of a mummy, the voice of a dying toy robot, a voice without a trace of saliva or phlegm in it.

And yet, for all this, the album is surprisingly melodic, and bursting with sonic imagination. It’s also frequently very funny — on “Mountain of Flesh,” for instance, Frena sings, “If you’re a solipsist, well then, what am I?” Decay was never this much fun: put it on, shed your skin, and dance around in your bones.