Look What the Cat Dragged In

There's a dwarf peering in the funhouse mirror, the flower in his lapel sprays poison. The mute horsegirl dances a tango down Transvestite Alley. A bloodshot eyed Kurt Weill can be found slumming among the reeferbahn, stoned on the fumes & whistling a tune he'll use later. From a corner booth Otto Dix draws sketches of the beautiful madness, ignoring his martini. Under a crumbling balcony the ghost of Django Reinhardt performs a nylon string serenade to all the lovely girls eating boysenberries as cannonfire thunders in the distance. Leah Callahan observes all this from the recesses of the night, in her Dietrichian tophat & fishnets, cigarette holder issuing snaky smoke, wine glass tipped over & bleeding onto the cabaret floor.

"Red Eye" makes a lopsided lurch through the very same junkyard where Tom Waits routinely scours for spare parts. This song is capable of burrowing into your subconscious like some sort of demonic earworm. And a most welcome one, at that. "Vampire Heart" takes us on an accordion-laden boatride under a chalky Paris moon. "Valentine" is a ransom note for the soul of Edith Piaf, held captive by gypsies somewhere on the outskirts of town. Her voice sounds so deceptively innocent, weaving in & out of the sparse acoustic arrangements, that you're not even aware of the knifeblade being unsheathed down near your elbow. The macabre can be beautiful & this album is testimony.