Way back in 1999, Michael Zapruder set himself a challenge: to write, record and post to his website one new song every week for a year. In the era of MySpace pages and their music players, music blogs, Last.fm, and countless other way to get your music out digitally, this doesn't seem like such a big deal. But back in 1999, hardly anyone used the web that way. Though his act didn't make him famous, it established Zapruder as a guy willing to experiment and push himself to be creative. His early embrace of the web as a tool to connect people to music (and vice versa) also got him a post as Pandora's music curator, though that's a position that could cease to exist next year if SoundExchange doesn't wake up and smell the 21st century coffee of internet radio.
Counting 52 Songs, Dragon Chinese Cocktail Horoscope is Zapruder's fourth album, and possibly also his most sedate and intimate. He's brought back Scott Solter, who mixed his last album, as co-producer, and the long list of collaborators is used sparingly, with less of the full-band backing and pronounced orchestration that characterized 2006's New Ways of Letting Go. This paring back-- let's call it de-Sufjanification-- gives the music a markedly darker feel, aided by Solter's adeptness at accenting the low-end and muzzling brighter tones. The album's opener and closer, "Happy New Year" and "Experimental Film", both benefit from minimalist rhythm beds, which are sonically antiqued by the liberal application of grainy filters that help Zapruder's merely adequate voice stand out more as a clear instrument.
Such onic juxtapositions are the album's secret weapon and ultimately its defining characteristic. The drums on "Lucy's Handmade Paper" are as straightforward and direct as can be, but the Moog and other keyboards that color the background give the song a ghostly edge. This edge carries over into several other songs, such as the hollow piano dirge "Can't We Bring You Home" and "South Kenosha", the latter of which sounds like it was recorded in a very cold, large room. The album's extremes are best typified by the startling, loud all-drum coda of "Bang on a Drum" and "Harbor Saints" and "Second Sunday in Ordinary Time", which are basic guitar-folk tunes with just a hint of ornamentation.
The album's greatest highlight is "Ads for Feelings". If Beck's "The New Pollution" and Joni Mitchell's "Free Man in Paris" conceived a child, it might sound something like this, with its great, mellow lead vocal, quick tempo, and psychedelic flute breaks. It's perhaps not a coincidence that the wildest, most heavily adorned song is the best. As much as Zapruder's new stripped-down approach can be charming and sometimes captivating, the sparest folk songs he comes up with here can also be a tad boring. With a more distinctive voice or stronger melodies they'd have more of a chance. Still, Dragon is another solid album, if a slight step down.
