Michael Zapruder Dragon Chinese Cocktail Horoscope by: Steve Scully Wed:01-Oct-08 Label: Sidecho Year: 2008 WB rating 70 out of 100

Michael Zapruder’s grandfather witnessed the assassination of JFK. That’s a good little bit of trivia, hey? It makes Zapruder sound like he might be an interesting chap. On top of this, the highlight of his music career thus far came in the form of 1995’s ‘52 Songs’ project: forget Sufjan Stevens’ 50 States (which will undoubtedly go unfinished) Zapruder wrote one song per week for one year. Again, you wonder why this little experiment hasn’t landed him more media coverage, as he’s got the bio for it. Well, you can wonder all you like, but it all makes sense when you turn on Dragon Chinese Cocktail Horoscope, Zapruder’s newest musical offering: it’s dense, often impenetrable stuff.

Understated, yet sometimes infinitely grandiose, Zapruder’s style is a unique one. Whether sounding like Mark Oliver Everett via Tom Waits, inviting sporadic choral interjections (‘Black Wine’), doing his best downbeat impression of Beck Hansen (‘Ads for Feelings’) or mumbling over synth clicks and whistles (‘Happy New Year’), there’s an antisocial charm to Zapruder, which however attractive and interesting, means you’re always kept at arm’s length.

For all intents and purposes a crooner, but never quite identifying an object of his croon, Zapruder’s voice is doused in the same ‘whisky and smoke’ appeal that Waits has traded off for decades. ‘Can’t We Bake You Home’ stands as a perfect example of this. Initially exceedingly difficult to comprehend, he whispers an invitation over the clunky piano and occasional clarinet noodling: “Can’t we bring you home?/Can’t we bring you home?/We have whisky/We got rain as well.”

The achingly slow pace of the record barely gets a jump-start, and when it does it’s a tad unconvincing. Zapruder’s style is most impressive in the desperation-soaked atmosphere of his small, uncompromising ballads, and in the upbeat, almost Wilco-country sounding ‘South Kenosha’ and the heavily rhythmic ‘Bang on a Drum’, his limited vocal range is exposed.

Never easy to gauge, often a little tiresome, and never quite as engrossing as you might hope, Dragon Chinese Cocktail Horoscope is nonetheless an impressive character piece. Zapruder has a style and voice like many before him, but never really encroaches on the territory laid out by these other artists. Instead, he occupies a little, quiet stool in the sparsely-populated bar, sipping away on two fingers of scotch and doodling on a napkin. His songs are personal, without being overly emotional; the song structures predictable without being traditional. It’s as though each track is just like a doodle on a napkin: a snippet of an idea, the tip of an iceberg that, given time, could very well have been something far greater. Dragon Chinese Cocktail Horoscope, if injected with a little bit more passion, could very well have attracted Bon Iver-style attention. Instead, Zapruder’s again destined to live outside the spotlight.