Ferret said sorry. Ferret said "I've had enough of your shit-eating grin."
She walked out.
She was back the next day, saying
"I'm sorry, honey.
I'm sorry, so sorry. Please accept my apology."
Wynn said "Yeah I sleep with other girls,
if you can't handle that too bad,
cuz we had such a good thing."
He smiled bright. White bread white.
Wynn said "It's too bad that you can't handle that I sleep with other girls,
if you can't handle that, I'm sorry.
It's too bad. I sleep with other girls,
and I'm sorry honey."
Smile, smile, smile, don't smile.
Don't smile Ferret, don't smile Ferret, smile.
I'm not sorry. I'm not sorry.
You can say you're sorry 'til the wind eats up our homes
until the worms destroy our bones
and still I'd rather be alone.
Ferret said sorry.

Sometimes you just can't say it any better: "For 8 years Charming Hostess was a rock band that blended eerie harmonies, complex rhythms, and a playfulness about gender. Charming Hostess drew on women's vocal traditions (primarily from Eastern Europe and North Africa), and integrated them with American folk forms both white and black."

So says the Charming Hostess website, and so it is. Eat, the group's first CD, was a revelation: taking folk musics both familiar and unfamiliar and blending them into their twisted mix of rock, jazz, and funk. It's a testament to their creativity that seven years later, there still isn't anything that sounds quite like it, with the exception of the band's long-delayed followup album, Punch. The majority of the songs here are traditional folk songs arranged by Jewlia Eisenberg for Charming Hostess' three-woman harmonized vocal attack, as well as their often quirky instrumental inclinations (many of which involve tricky time signatures). You'll find Hungarian, Judeo-Spanish, Judeo-Turkish, African-American, and Bulgarian traditional songs, in addition to oddities like a rearrangement of "Won't You Keep Us Working" by The Residents and a tremendously effective musical interpretation of the Yiddish proverb "Sha Shtil."

With such a diversity of source material, it's a testament to Eisenberg's vision that Eat still feels coherent, and Charming Hostess maintains a distinct and unmistakable identity. At the core of that identity are the three wonderfully talented vocalists, whose voices blend in pleasing and addictive ways throughout the album. But there's also an irrepressible sense of humor, a strange edge to the lyrical content (much of which deals with gender roles and identity and intimate relationships), and an overall playfulness that holds everything together. In fact, it's the more playful pieces - the catchy "Klezsex" and the funked-up, rocked-out Bulgarian folksong "Elenke," on which Jenny Scheinman absolutely shines on electric violin, among them - that are my lasting favorites.

The members of the sadly now-defunct Charming Hostess "big band" are true musical chameleons - some members of groups like Sleepytime Gorilla Museum, Faun Fables, and so on, some active in the prolific West Coast avant-jazz scene - so it should be no surprise that Eat is similarly schizophrenic. Yet somehow it all fits together beautifully: with this album, Jewlia Eisenberg successfully found common threads that run through all folk musics regardless of the extent of their separation in time and space. Not only that, but she took those threads and ran with them, weaving them into a fantastic and inspiring whole.

review by Brandon Wu
http://www.progreviews.com/reviews/display.php?rev=ch-eat

Exact Audio Copy V0.99 prebeta 5 from 4. May 2009

EAC extraction logfile from 9. March 2010, 21:48

Charming Hostess / Eat

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Exact Audio Copy V0.99 prebeta 5 from 4. May 2009

EAC extraction logfile from 9. March 2010, 20:01

Jewlia Eisenberg + Charming Hostess / Trilectic

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Charming Hostess is the kind of band that makes for frustrating reviewing, because they integrate so many folk musics into their sound that trying to describe their music and their influences is bound to make all but the most widely-listened reviewer feel inadequate. I might say that, on Punch, this six-piece band draws from Jewish, Eastern European, and American folk traditions, but that list is both too limited and too shallow. So let's settle with this: Charming Hostess take three female vocalists, some of the musicians from the wacky, heavy, theatrical (and, yes, proggy) rock groups Sleepytime Gorilla Museum and Idiot Flesh, and aim their collected talents at a music target that itself is an eclectic collection of folk, rock, funk, and general weirdness.

Even in their big-band format (currently the group is three singers with no other members; Punch was recorded several years ago when the big band still existed), the core of Charming Hostess' sound are the harmonized voices of the three female singers. Those voices carry the melodies and sing slightly twisted lyrics (in a variety of languages) about sexuality, gender, and other life issues and topics not typically tackled in such a whimsical musical manner. Here, as on the debut Eat, the singers are augmented by diverse instrumentation, and the results range from the relatively straight-up country & western of the Lefty Frizzell cover "Long Black Veil" (a personal favorite of mine on this album) to traditional Turkish, Palestinian, Transylvanian, and African-American songs all arranged by the deft hand of bandleader Jewlia Eisenberg. All of these traditional songs are given a distinct spin courtesy of those beautiful harmonized vocals and a touch of instrumental weirdness - odd time signatures, the occasional electric funk bass line, and some driving rhythmic rock-outs.

Initially, Punch didn't grab me quite the way Eat did, probably just because the latter was such a revelation, and this release is in a sense just more of the same. The instant-gratification impact of rockified, funkified folk songs like "Dali Tzerni" or "Klezsex" isn't here. But the lessened obviousness gives way to a perhaps more subtle beauty and balance in composition, and with further listen I think this long-delayed album is close to the equal of its predecessor. Punch's improved production quality, fuller and less brittle, helps as well. It's a shame this version of the band no longer exists, but having Punch finally see the light of the day is a great treat indeed.

review by Brandon Wu
http://www.progreviews.com/reviews/display.php?rev=ch-punch

Imagine The Roches, Cake and Throwing Muses all get merged together in some weird science experiment. The outcome would be Charming Hostess's big band. It appears that Charming Hostess has undergone some lineup changes over the years, but the self-described "large-band" is the one that plays on Punch. Jewlia Eisenberg is the lead singer and songwriter for Charming Hostess and the only member of both the old and new line-up.

The music has a serious middle-eastern, Israeli, feel to it. The lyrical content tends to rip modern ideas, like Lot doing horrible things to earn his reward. But the lyrics are kind of secondary to the melody. Charming Hostess combine the intelligent songwriting of Kristin Hersh (Throwing Muses), the harmony of the Roche Sisters, and the bass-driven music of Cake. The music gets a little repetitive, as most CDs that rely on harmony vocals tend to, but overall each song stands strong.

Progressive Rock / Metal fans probably won't find much to their interest here, but Punch is highly recommended to fans of Garrison Starr, Belly, Barbara Manning and the above mentioned bands. Charming Hostess is not afraid to step out of the norm and make sounds that appeal to them and listeners as well. The angst plays out well and the rhythm keeps everything moving.
http://www.seaoftranquility.org/reviews.php?op=showcontent&id=2329

Exact Audio Copy V0.99 prebeta 5 from 4. May 2009

EAC extraction logfile from 9. March 2010, 18:53

Charming Hostess / Punch

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Exact Audio Copy V0.99 prebeta 5 from 4. May 2009

EAC extraction logfile from 9. March 2010, 19:51

Unknown Artist / Unknown Title

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Exact Audio Copy V0.99 prebeta 5 from 4. May 2009

EAC extraction logfile from 9. March 2010, 20:10

Red Pocket / Thick

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If Zap Mama included Jewish and Balkan musical influences in their repertoire they'd probably sound almost as good as Charming Hostess. But that would just be the sound. Try to imagine Zap Mama's material if their song selection criteria included a desire to match voice to unconventional songtexts to convey poetry and prose to the ear. Sounds intellectual and intimidating, especially when you consider that bandleader Eisenberg's last outing set to music the diaries of Walter Benjamin and Asja Lacis. But this, this CD? It swings. The joy of three amazing strong women's voices entwining, weaving ... it's the most wonderful vocal pick-me-up I've heard in ages.

Eisenberg met Sarajevo poet Semezdin Mehmedinovic at a bar in Berkeley. Where else? (Although I, myself, happened to have been in Sarajevo before the war, and then soon after. I met typographers and teachers but no poets. So it goes. But it also means that I see a physical city, before and after the war, as I read the poems.)

Sem's poems about being in Sarajevo during the siege are piercing and personal. Reading them quietly, in the sunlight by our living room window is revealing. Listening to them set to music, set to Bosnian, Jewish, African, American melodies makes them real and personal. It's as thought the band has discovered the ultimate art of typography-the ability to convey words such that one doesn't notice that one is reading-and used music to translate from writing to the ear directly.

The album opens with a couple of traditional Bosnian Jewish songs that are welcome and beautiful. Think of Flory Jagoda (another Sarajevo poet) with three voices weaving in and out with perfect balkan-style harmonies. The CD closes with a couple of covers, unfamiliar to me, but which clearly belong.

The poetry is the main thing. In five minutes, Sem's prose, "The Tunnel" becomes a universe of despair, then meditation in a way that I missed entirely on my own reading of the full piece. It is about the narrow tunnel through which the city was supplied during the siege: "... I was ready to lay down and die right where I was 'till I found a spot that was a little wider, made to put aside the dead, so the living could pass. I just stayed right there, for hours, underground, and thought of Radovan." Similarly, the solo mixing of pure Serbo-Croatian voice (oops, sorry, it's called "Bosnian" now, as though a separate language) alternating with English solo voice on "What will you remember" is sublime and beautiful, accompanied only by spare instrumentation and background hums. In the priginal prose piece, the poet ruminates on memory and harks back and forth to 10 years ago and the movie "BladeRunner. Here, the group takes the last paragraph and captures a moment outside the scope of war, of children sledding: "those who are in love with their sleds and those who just love sledding", and holds on to that memory. "I know that, when everything passes, I'll remember this too...."

My favorite piece, however, is "Death is a Job". It could be on top 10 radio but for it's unsentimental look at a photographer waiting for someone to be shot so that he can sell the photograph to a news journal. Still, the voices just SOAR. Doowop for the nineties in Sarajevo. Even in recording despair and utter helplessness, Charming Hostess find the life in the words and turn them into a defiant celebration. On the other hand, my next favorite is the spoken, short piece, "Open Dialogue" in which they manage to skewer people's expectations and stereotypes of ethnicity and the blue/red states of the former Yugoslavia. It reminds me of Laurie Anderson's piece about Walter Benajamin in its mix of spoken voice and music, and the much to think about embodied by the dialogue. Also of note is the following piece, Adam, by Celia Dropkin, which seems to be Hebrew? (or maybe it's all Serbo-Croatian, some sung with a conspicuous modern Hebrew accent!). The album's concluding song, "Aish Ye K'dish" is definitely Serbo-Croatian with a wonderful mix of harder instrumental accompaniment and singing, all to wonderful Balkan melodies.

This is my favorite album since the first Charming Hostess album, now out of print, Eat. The only thing better than hearing ChoHo on disk is hearing them live. As I type these words, they are singing their way across the country. For those who catch them live, this review will be a pale confirmation of the wonderful, and, like the memory of children sledding on a cold January day, an affirmation of the power of voice to convey word and thought to heal and to sustain. In summary, this is a wonderful album, and possibly unlike any other that you've heard. Buy it. Then bring the band to your town to sing live.

Reviewed by Ari Davidow, 29 Mar 2005.

Exact Audio Copy V0.99 prebeta 5 from 4. May 2009

EAC extraction logfile from 9. March 2010, 19:54

Charming Hostess / Sarajevo Blues

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Read mode : Secure
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Defeat audio cache : Yes
Make use of C2 pointers : No

Read offset correction : 6
Overread into Lead-In and Lead-Out : No
Fill up missing offset samples with silence : Yes
Delete leading and trailing silent blocks : No
Null samples used in CRC calculations : Yes
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Quality : High
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Additional command line options : -8 -V -T "ARTIST=%a" -T "TITLE=%t" -T "ALBUM=%g" -T "DATE=%y" -T "TRACKNUMBER=%n" -T "GENRE=%m" -T "COMMENT=EAC FLAC -8" %s

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Track 7 not present in database
Track 8 not present in database
Track 9 not present in database
Track 10 not present in database
Track 11 not present in database
Track 12 not present in database
Track 13 not present in database
Track 14 not present in database
Track 15 not present in database

None of the tracks are present in the AccurateRip database

End of status report