Colossal Yes

Bio:
Widely known as the drummer in Comets on Fire, Utrillo Kushner's musical background reaches beyond that. Kushner's drunken master playing style, witnessed at so many Comets shows, becomes all the more apparent with his new band, Colossal Yes. Having dabbled in piano and keyboards for almost a decade, Kushner forfeits the drum kit completely to assume command as a full-fledged piano man. These songs have existed in Kushner's mind for years, but have only been heard by his closest friends through home recordings and a handful of sporadic solo shows.

Far from their simple piano chords and vocals beginnings, the songs have morphed, grown and developed, reaching their maximum clarity via the Acapulco sessions. Acapulco Roughs is one of those purely honest albums that risks a dive into cheeseville. Kushner was proud to cry "More Fozzie Bear!" and, "Play how you think Mark Knopfler would play!" at his session players, pushing for even greater chooglin', bar-band jamming, and feel good melodic payoffs.

And it has the two main elements that could spell instant death: unabashed sincerity and piano playing. But something happens when untainted musicianship meets earnest presentation and a true sense of songwriting - the resulting music is just damn good. Good in that pre-ironic sense, because this doesn't sound like an "Is this a joke?" record, much like that first listen to Tom Waits, Scott Walker, or Bill Fay didn't make you feel like everyone who praised them was insane. Acapulco Roughs carries the joy of creation with it that you'll find on few records, save The Basement Tapes, Vintage Violence, A Salty Dog and Time of the Last Percussion. We're talking rock history here, unbridled enthusiasm from a musician who has broken a sweat with some of the most extreme bands around today, and returned to gleefully exclaim that the venerated, classic approach breathes unabashedly with life.

If you haven't guessed, this is the seventies. The idealized, mythological seventies, where you're not sick of the songs because they haven't been played to death on every AOR station in America. Badfinger. Spirit. Procol Harum. The Band. The true essence of rock, stripped to its essentials by virtue of its vainglorious indulgences, existing forever as the absolute articulation of the form.

Colossal Yes is the greatest affirmation of all. Bigger than big. It's colossal. And there's no joke behind the smiling.