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Andy Ditzler's "Songs From Yes
and No" provides this peculiar
listening experience: It at once rubs your nerves while soothing your
ears. If you give it a chance.
Undoubtedly, some listeners will press eject after two minutes of the
album's quirky opener, "Another Customer." Ditzler's theatrics -- in
voice and music -- are happy, alienating and fascinating.
But listen, and you will be rewarded with precise storytelling and a
barrage of sounds that are anything but innocuous. "Yes and No" is a
multimedia theater work commissioned in 2002 by Clayton State Theatre
in Georgia.
On songs such as "Economics" and "Just the Six of Us," with its
channel-changing tenor that camouflages popular song hooks, you listen
like TV shows.
If indie rock were an election, Ditzler would be a stellar candidate
-- if you would only look past the typical-sounding front-runners.
-- Otis R. Taylor Jr.