Track Listing

1. Power Of Pussy
2. Great Radio
3. What If
4. Kisses Sweeter Than Wine
5. Chicken Pussy
6. White Rental Car Blues
7. Nick Cave Dolls
8. Bedazzled
9. Obscene And Pornographic Art
10. Connie
11. What Kind Of Man Reads Playboy
12. I Need A New Tape
13. Women Tied Up In Knots
14. Junior
15. Mystery Hole
16. Time Is Coming
17. Folk Song

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #278028 in Music
• Released on: 1999-12-06
• Number of discs: 1
• Formats: Explicit Lyrics, Original recording reissued, Import

CD Description
Chances are good that you have never heard anything quite like the music of this band. Featuring the varied talents of musician/producer Kramer and actress, performance artist, and writer Ann Magnuson, Bongwater synthesizes rock, folk idioms, '60s psychedelia, and an unerring hipster sensibility into a wild, postmodern, tongue-in-cheek art project. Magnusonand Kramer turn their amused, critical eyes to the matter of political correctness ("Women Tied Up In Knots"), folk music ("Folk Song"), and, on the disc's finest cut, "Obscene and Pornographic Art", matters of topical concern.
Magnuson's ambling narratives on such tracks as "Chicken Pussy" and "Nick Cave Dolls" are part dream-journal and part social satire. She adopts personae and roles while passing the whole act off as a stand-up comedy routine. While Kramer's genre-splicing recombinant aesthetic may test the patience of "serious" music lovers, Bongwater's musicians would be the first to deprecate themselves. It is exactly this sense of humor, which manages to be outrageous while still being conscientious, clever without being too cute, and goofy but intelligent,that makes this band such a delight. Bongwater is the ultimate political, literary, style-melting joke- rock art project, and THE POWER OF PUSSY is the duo's finest offering.

Customer Reviews

STRANGELY CAPTIVATING MASTERPIECE
This is an incredibly varied album, sometimes hysterically funny as on the title track, but always cerebral, thought-provoking and strangely captivating. It's awash with clever samples that definitely contribute to the ambience and the weirdness.

There are gentle ballads like Great Radio, What If and their cover of Kisses Sweeter Than Wine. Chicken Pussy is a bizarre sound collage with hilarious spoken lyrics while White Rental Car Blues sounds like a sweet soul song if you ignore the suggestive lyrics.

Nick Cave Dolls starts with those weird samples, a guy talking about the name of the band plus random snatches of conversation and noise, before Ann's wistful voice takes up a surrealistic tale of a stroll through the city while sending up a variety of stereotypes.

On Bedazzled she turns into Marlene Dietrich or similar European sultry chanteuse in a conversation/talk and response format with the other voices. The next one, Obscene & Pornographic Art, is a literate and witty observation of a trip to the Metropolitan Museum of Art that'll have you in stitches, especially the "suffragette song" segment.

A robotic, laconic male vocal narrates the tale of a visit to a strange game room over ominous warbling guitar sounds on What Kind Of Man Reads Playboy, while Junior kicks off with raucous guitar and turns into a love song with Ann's dreamy vocalising which also graces the wall-of-sound rock song Connie. The reference to "four wild Rednecks" at the start of I Need A New Tape raises a smile.

This amazing album's tour de force is the astonishing Folk Song, all 9+ minutes of it, where her voice really soars. It deals with inter alia anarchists, sexual politics, media networks, the Butthole Surfers, Giorgio Armani, Romeo Gigli and refers to anthropologist Joseph Campbell in this most beautiful chorus: "Joseph Campbell gave me hope and now I have been saved/So I sing hello death, goodbye Avenue A."

As the song progresses, Ann sings abut health food, Dr Suess, religion, TV series, movies, politics, taking mushrooms at Joshua Tree where Gram Parsons died, Berlin Alexanderplatz, Carlos Castaneda, Led Zeppelin, the feelgood movie of the decade and many other things, before ending with those beautiful lines again: "Hello death, goodbye Avenue A." Phew! Not many songs in the history of popular music can encompass so many things and still remain cohesive.

This is one of the most intelligent rock albums I've ever had the pleasure of hearing, brimful with melodic twists and turns, with gripping lyrics, brilliant instrumentation and vivid imagery. I know Ann Magnuson is now a successful actress, but I'm surprised she's not a famous author too, judging by her talent for satire and moving imagery.

Magnuson and Kramer at their very very BEST!
This album is quintessential Bongwater - it has 17 powerful/weird/funny/new york crazy tunes narrating contemporary life in the East Village, combined with powerful political and social messages. True to form it is melange of noise - telephones ringing, answermachine reels, and Magnuson's stunning voice set against a back drop of Kramers finest score. Buy this to laugh, to listen and to learn - my favourite tracks on the album are Chicken Pussy [5], Kisses Sweeter than Wine [4] and Folk Song [17].