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 Would You Like to Feel Sublime?
By Joe Swift 

Ding Dong – Nellie McKay

One of my favorite albums of this century, twelve years in, is “Get Away From Me,” the 2004 debut from singer/songwriter/keyboardist Nellie McKay.  Uniquely for a first album, it was a double CD.  What ties together the mix of pop and rap and cabaret and more is McKay’s good humor and intelligence.  Playful both lyrically and musically, GAFM holds up well today.

It was hard choosing which song from GAFM to use for this post.  I landed on “Ding Dong” for its juxtaposition of melancholy lyrics with a bouncy melody and the way its lyrics are open to various interpretations.

Speaking of interpretations, I try to avoid asking musicians what their songs “mean,” as I feel that the best songs mean different things to different people – including the songwriter.  Also, it would be like asking a comedian to explain a joke – it’s either funny or it isn’t.  A song either works for you or it doesn’t.

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By Jason Crane, The Jazz Session

(NEW YORK CITY – MARCH 23, 2012)

Hearing Nellie McKay sing about Rachel Carson at Feinstein’s on March 22 was like watching a Michael Moore movie at a Goldman Sachs board meeting.

The evening didn’t start well. In line was a couple complaining about how they’re always there and they just can’t understand why they don’t have their usual table and blah blah blah blah. (“We’ll seat you at Mr. Feinstein’s personal table, ma’am.” Ugh.) Everyone had fur on and the place looked like the set of a 1940s mob movie, except for the very modern prices. Given the announced program for the evening — a musical revue about an environmentalist — it seemed that something must have gone horribly wrong.

But it took just a few minutes into the first song to see that if a joke was being played, McKay was definitely in on it. Her subversive set of activist-inspired protest pop would have found a friendlier audience in Zucotti Park, but part of the genius of the show was that people in furs paid $40-70 each plus a $25 food-and-beverage minimum to have someone criticize their existence while playing a ukelele.

Rachel Carson was a pioneering environmentalist whose book Silent Spring galvanized the nation in support of protecting natural resources. McKay’s revue (“Silent Spring — It’s Not Nice To Fool Mother Nature”) was part biopic, part polemic, part iVictrola playlist of music from the Tin Pan Alley era. (more…)

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By WILL FRIEDWALD, Wall Street Journal

Feinstein’s at Loews Regency
540 Park Ave., (212) 339-4095
Through March 31
The life of pioneering ecologist Rachel Carsonis herewith presented in a form that’s equal parts cabaret and musical theater. In this one-woman show, singer-songwriter-pianist Nellie McKay plays Carson in the first person, so to speak, interacting with members of her quartet (particularly saxophonist Tivon Pennicott), who put their instruments down from time to time to briefly play various figures in Carson’s life. Ms. McKay has invented what might be called bio-cabaret-collage, constructed from a combination of standard songs that support the story as well as what often seem like recycled lines from movie biopics. Despite the seriousness of the subject—Ms. Carson’s lifelong battle to protect the planet from pollution —the mood is never solemn. Still, Ms. McKay is unflinching in her belief in Carson’s message, and in the power of the great songs to tell her story. (more…)