Murder By Death - In Bocca Al Lupo (2006)

Wearing the black and dusty cloak of the world-weary and old-blooded is an authenticity trick as old as the blues-- just ask Johnny Cash. Or Bob Dylan, who let Columbia claim his train-hopping, fightin'-for-nickles hobo routine as the god's honest truth, the life-giving seeds of an Authentic American Musician. Telling stories is what great artists do; the best of them even cover their tracks a bit while they do it so, you know, we can believe ‘em some.

Not so with Murder by Death, who sound an awful lot like the college boys and girls they presumably were not so long ago, rocking university parties with their rollickin' drinking songs and older-than-our-years schtick. Comprised of equal parts vaudeville dramatics, one-eyed orchestral slashes, and polka-- also known as Cash, pirates, and Tom Waits-- they've named their newest In Bocca Al Lupo. Why? Italian students, on the eve of exams, trade that phrase ("In the Mouth of the Wolf") for the equally bathetic reply: "Kill the Wolf". Would they, the four Murder By Deaths, make us believe they had even seen a wolf, let alone slaughtered one to ace Biology, they'd have a better record.

There is, presumably, no one among us who wouldn't trade our lives for that of a pirate, a Romanian gambler, or a spot in the Star Wars cantina, so it's difficult to fault Murder by Death for subject matter. And once, in a vast German beer hall, I caught a traditional German Folk Act, piping and foot-stomping their way through John Denver's "Country Roads", an experience I thought I'd never have again-- until In Bocca Al Lupo, anyway, which captures both the in-a-foreign-and-strange-land bit and the fact the music's origins are, like Mr. Denver, as mundane as it gets back home in Philadelphia or wherever you're from.