Word: albums
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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LOOK AT THE cover of this album. Two slightly out of focus ethereal looking women (or are they nymphs?) with big, liquid eyes, and fluffy angel hair peer out. They come straight off those cards from the Coop that show young girls in white gauzy dresses, strolling on the beach, holding white conch shells to their ears. Your grandmother would love a photo of you just like this...
...over a year's absence from the recording studio. And the back cover demonstrates that they haven't changed their mood very much. Sporting devil's golden horns, they flaunt funny faces at the would-be purchaser. The earthly, self-amused, un-Los Angeles character that graces their other albums, Dancer with Bruised Knees, and Kate and Anna McGarrigle,once again graces Pronto Monto. It's too bad, though, that too many songs have shifted their subject matter into obscurity. Still this combo-country, cabaret, lejazzhot, album has enough winners to carry you on by the few boring numbers...
There might even be an FM hit on this album. "Oh My Heart" is the rememberable kind of tune that is very easy to hum. The only thing that could stop this song from reaching the charts would be Anna McGarrigle's voice, which is the high vibrato that elementary school music teachers and maiden aunts usually have. Luckily, Kate, who has a lower, richer voice, sings lead vocals in most numbers. In fact, she easily outdoes Linda Ronstadt in "Just Another Broken Heart," a real you've-gone-and-broke-my-heard-and-I-just-can't-live-without...
...other surrealistic song on the album, "Side of Fries," is just as strange as "NACL," but not as funny. The idea of a well-dressed hotdog amidst a panoply of random images doesn't hold together well enough to give the song a central idea, but listening to "Side of Fries" is akin to reading James Joyce without the notes...
...tune is more than nice in the song "Pronto Monto," the title song of the album. The song is in French, very clear schoolbook French, with an English translation generously supplied on the sleeve. Along with the haunting words ("Such sad dreams/Troubling my sleep with that howl/Farewells must be but au revoirs"), and a charming french cabaret flavor, "Pronto Monto" is all variety. There's a brief transition to disco at the end of the song, French disco, and mysterious strains of mandolin, violin and horn floating in and out of the music. "Pronto Monto" embodies everything good about...