Album art by Elena Brighittini
Style: Progressive metal, avant-garde metal (mostly clean vocals)
Recommended for fans of: Mr. Bungle, Cardiacs, Diablo Swing Orchestra, Native Construct, Devin Townsend
Country: USA (California) / UK
Release date: 15 November 2024
A musician contains multitudes. Sure, someone may ply their primary trade in one particular genre at which they happen to excel, but it’s not as if that’s the only music they like. A death metal vocalist may unwind with some jazz between bouts of growling, or a classical violinist could enjoy throwing down to some drum and bass at a rave. Or maybe, just maybe, a guitarist for a ’80s-influenced prog-pop-rock group might enjoy a combination of Broadway musicals, dissonant avant-metal, classical string quartets, intricate jazz fusion, gentle indie-folk, comedy skits, and circus music… among other things. Man, I really need to get better at fake hypotheticals.
This specific and absurdly eclectic combination of styles comes from one Joey Frevola, best known as the guitarist for Subway-beloved UK dance-prog outfit Kyros, as he embarks upon his second solo adventure after 2019’s Gone. In contrast to its conceptual predecessor, Art Supplies and Pain is one of the most aggressively anti-conceptual albums I’ve ever heard… or rather, the concept is that there is no concept. This is less an album and more of a compilation of literally every musical thought and impulse that went through Joey’s head over the past five-odd years and didn’t fit in with his main band’s sound. The prevailing credo behind this project’s construction seems to have been “Sure, why the fuck not?”– an approach that leads to both delightfully unique surprises and painfully half-baked misfires in equal measure.
Starting off with the good, though, Frevola is an undeniably talented musician, able to shred with the best of them, and he’s assembled a small army of equally virtuosic instrumentalists and vocalists from across the indie prog community to assist him as guest stars. With this much musical ability stuffed into a single album, the level of execution on display here is seldom short of fantastic, particularly when it stays in the (admittedly rather wide) lane of heavy, fusion-influenced prog metal. The album’s dual instrumental title tracks, “Pain” and “and Art Supplies”, plus the twist-filled “Bulimic Balloon”, are all chock full of excellent, mind-bending solos and pummeling riffs, as well as plenty of powerful percussion and tricky rhythms from Kyros drummer Robin Johnson. Said solos are bolstered by some killer guest features from keyboardists Ryo Okumoto (Spock’s Beard) and Zach Kamins (An Endless Sporadic), as well as another Kyros bandmate, Charlie Cawood, on the sitar of all things. This strength in (comparatively) straightforward prog stylings doesn’t end with the instrumentals either. “Break the Window” and “Welcome to the Breakdown” are both enjoyably theatrical prog metal romps that recall the manic, unpredictable drama spun by the late Native Construct, with the former stacking incredibly thick layers of choirs behind Flummox‘s Jesse Peck while the latter is a darker number driven by Andy Robison (Ihlo) absolutely going off at the widest extremes of his vocal range. “Lizard”, too, is enjoyable in its unashamed pastiche of Devin Townsend‘s wall-of-sound style while still being possibly the most tightly composed song on the album, wasting no time leaping from one big riff to the next.
But as I alluded to earlier, Art Supplies and Pain is far from an ordinary prog metal album, and this is where things start to get rough. One of the pitfalls of writing an entire album by yourself is there’s no one to tell you “no” when your ideas become ill-advised, and this is transparently obvious when Frevola starts trying to be funny, which is often. To be honest, his nonsensical, “holds up spork” sense of humor isn’t really my thing, but even if you find the idea of a fictional penguin-themed confection called a “Peng-cake Sundae (Not a pancake like the fruit, or Sunday like the month)” to be the peak of hilarity, dedicating nearly two minutes to a skit where a woman sends increasingly anguished voice messages to her husband over his obsession with the stuff is a little much. And while I’m not opposed to prog instrumentals getting a little silly sometimes, it has to be done with care– things like the doofy nonsense sounds that sound like a Banjo-Kazooie character rapping in “Pain” or the numerous musical non sequiturs and dissonances in “WTF” actively detract from the strong musicianship surrounding them. Many of the vocal tracks, meanwhile, have a bad habit of excessively pursuing wacky unpredictability to the detriment of actual, coherent melody. Perhaps the worst offender is “SVÄRTA”, whose concept seems to be “what if Diablo Swing Orchestra wrote ‘A Rancid Romance’ about a couple trying to put together an IKEA bed?”. The vocalists imitate the operatic style admirably, but the chaotic, ridiculous, and absolutely hookless composition falls miserably short of the sharp, taut tango of its inspiration.
And yet, for all the times the album’s experimentation falls on its face, there are just as many bits of offbeat exploration that lead to genuinely pleasant surprises. While the first half of “Gramophone” is little more than a charming vocoded ditty, the jazzy, lushly orchestrated reprise of its melody that follows is a delight. In a similar vein, “Calcium Down the Hole” comes out of left field in that it is a straight-up string quartet piece without a guitar or vocal in sight, and it’s done very well. A tense, energetic composition performed solely by guest Patrick Riley, it shows how Frevola’s frenetic writing style benefits from the constraints imposed by the quartet arrangement. My personal favorite, though, is “Lydia Loves the Ocean”, a gorgeous track led by strumming, folksy guitars and Erika Amarela’s delicate soprano – kind of like a more twee version of Marjana Semkina. It’s the most melodically striking tune on here by a long shot, and as the textures become darker and heavier and the lyrics grow bittersweet, I find it to be the only track to genuinely pull at my heartstrings. More of this, please.
Closer “My Dilemma” serves as a sort of closing statement for the album as a whole, a self-aware bit of reflection where Frevola, through the ever-flexible voice of Max Mobarry (Others By No One), goes over his struggles as an artist drawn to the weird and eclectic. As if anticipating some of the issues critics such as myself would have with his work, he calls out “Nonsense notes and dissonance used for a punchline” and “chords that don’t make sense”, yet can’t make peace with the idea of fitting his creative output into a commercially palatable box. All the while, the music chaotically shifts from ragtime to jazz to punishing distortion, even throwing in a winking nod to the ’80s synths of his full-time band. Eventually, a decision is made– to “not commit to anything”, to keep letting his freak flag fly, commercial success be damned. And, honestly, I can respect that. Sure, this album made me physically cringe a few times. Sure, its 70 minute runtime could have used a lot more self-editing. And sure, its strong musicianship is let down by overly-quirky compositions and scattershot melodies. But at the end of the day, this is the authentic, unvarnished expression of who Joey Frevola is as a person and a musician. He is cringe, but he is free, and that’s an ethos this world could use a little more of.
Recommended tracks: Bulimic Balloon, Lizard, Calcium Down the Hole, Lydia Loves the Ocean, My Dilemma
You may also like: Kyros, Others By No One, Toehider, PhonoPaths, Cheeto’s Magazine
Final verdict: 6/10
Related links: Bandcamp | Spotify | Facebook | Instagram
Joey Frevola is:
– Joey Frevola (guitars, bass, keyboards, misc. instruments, some vocals)
With:
– Robin Johnson (drums, percussion)
– Connor Vance (strings)
– Grace Hayhurst (French horn)
– Emmanuel Echem (trumpet)
– Dustin Texás (woodwinds)
– Charlie Cawood (double bass, sitar solo on “and Art Supplies”)
– Patrick Riley (string quartet on “Calcium Down the Hole”)
– John Sinclaire (violin on “Pain”)
– Zach Kamins (keyboard solo on “Pain”)
– Ryo Okumoto (synth and organ solos on “Bulimic Balloon”)
– Jesse Peck (lead vocals on “Break the Window”, additional vocals on “Gramophone”)
– Hayley Boggs (lead vocals on “SVÄRTA”, choir vocals on “Break the Window”)
– Christian Corea (lead vocals on “SVÄRTA”)
– Andy Robison (lead vocals on “Welcome to the Breakdown”)
– Bryan Segraves (lead vocals on “Lizard”)
– Erika Amarela (lead vocals on “Lydia Loves the Ocean”)
– Max Mobarry (lead vocals on “My Dilemma”)
