Staring at the Cellophane

Staring at the Cellophane holds many similarities with its predecessor, Living in a Moon so Blue, starting with the aesthetics of the cover. Here we find the same black and white parlor guitar as the prior album, only we're now pulled back from it, and we see a clothes rack like one might find in a motel. A travelling minstrel, then?

The contents aren't telling. As, again, with the previous album these are short blasts of often angular, polytonal blues. Also, as with the last album, this one begins with a proper name, "Michael," whose lyrical contents consist of "Michael, Michael, where are you now" repeated over and again,. This is pretty standard of the songs here - others include "You're stuck in the sand/go home" ("Sand I") and "I see red lights/I see green lights" ("I See Lights") - in all cases the lyrics are repeated a few times, sometimes in slightly different order, while the strings pluck around them. But the songs don't seem to be so much about standing alone as forming a cohesive whole. One bleeds right into the next, changing the tempo up or down a bit, pausing for a history lesson with the curious "Nepoleon (sic) in Russia," (which tells the dictator to "fall out a window") and ending with the creepy "Blood and Bone:" "His skin is stretched tight across his bones/blood running down his cheeks/children gazing at his feet/ladies he’d like to meet/lonely in that ancient street/hanging for somebody else/or everybody else."

Strangely, the song 'Micheal' shares the same opening line as the Red House Painter's song of the same.

[edit] Track Listing:

Michael – 2:57
This is for You – 3:09
Riddles Riddling Me – 2:47
Basic Themes – 2:50
I See Lights – 2:31
Rather Be Blind – 1:51
Away – 2:18
Don't Get Too Upset – 2:30
A Letter – 2:21
Nevermore – 3:01
Sand I – 2:14
Nepoleon in Russia – 3:07
Split to the East – 2:55
Number 14 – 2:52
Blood and Bone – 3:15

[edit] Album Cover Description

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The same guitar from Living in a Moon so Blue, poorly framed in the lower left corner.

In the lower right corner, a cheap wardrobe (or perhaps a garment moving box) with a single coat of some sort hanging obliquely in it).

The guitar is sitting on a table... alluding to the possibility that the guitar from the previous album was also sitting on the same table.