AND THE WIREMEN

And The Wiremen is a Brooklyn-based ensemble led by songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Lynn Wright. As the primary songwriter and lyricist, he specifically works and collaborates with core members Paul Watson (Sparklehorse) on trumpet, Tony Maimone (Pere Ubu) on bass, and longtime partner in crime Jon Petrow (Cloudroom) on guitar (with whom Wright also shares time in another laudable Brooklyn-based outfit, Bee and Flower). The experience, ingenuity, and craft this collection of musicians brings to the table is further enhanced by their collective willingness to defy genre. They are improvisatory, whimsical, and pleasurably good at leaving a listener playing a song-to-song guessing game. At times heavily Latin-influenced--with strokes of cumbia and an underpinning of Colombian and Brazilian percussion--these songs comfortably move into jazz, avant-pop, or blues--sometimes within the same number--despite a deceptive minimalist approach to song structures. Lyrically, Wright is cogent, funny, and literate; a virtuoso, really. He has a knack for catchy one-liners (hardly throwaways) and passages that sound indebted to some wily trident of Faulkner, South American Surrealism and film noir--aspects which combine to push both the music and Wright's smooth, cool-as-a-cucumber delivery into the lofty realms of fable.