Artist: Mark Pickerel and His Praying Hands
Album: Cody's Dream
Label: Bloodshot Records
Year: 2008
Reviewed by: Woodstock Slim
1st thing that catches you bout this album is the great cover design. It seems that great cover designs are back again, and dammit its time! Mark Pickerel and his praying hands steps out with finesse a lot of experience and a tenderness that will keep you listening all the way through. Watch out for track 4 She Calls, phew! there's a guitar solo in there that ripps you like raining blades, mmmmmm.... loved it!
Inspired by a solitary trip through the South without a working car radio and only his own thoughts to keep him company, Mark Pickerel’s second album for Bloodshot, Cody’s Dream, is a Steinbeckian odyssey through modern America; a tale of throughways and the characters that occupy them. The result: 13 dusty gems flirting with the static-y ghosts of Motown, Tin Pan
Alley, classic pop, and soul; dancing across the radio spectrum like a trail of mileposts in the rearview.
Cody’s Dream sees Mark once again back to work with legendary producer Steve Fisk (Nirvana, Screaming Trees, Wedding Present), and a crack team of Northwest music all-star players, including guitarist Johnny Sangster (whose production credits include Mudhoney, The Fucking Eagles, The Briefs), Jim Sangster on bass (Young Fresh Fellows), and drummer Michael
Musburger (Supersuckers, Fastbacks, Posies). Other VIPs include Texan guitar slinger Ian Moore and cellist Barb Hunter (Afghan Whigs, Twilight Singers).
Cody's Dream is the kind of album that you will always here new bits on, tiny sections jump out at certain times. You'll suddenly hear a chorus here and a fiddling with a guitar there, backing vocals on your favorite song on the album you have never heard there before. It creeps but it does not haunt. Its sweet, warm and charming. Hell, I will never play this in my car.
How does one drive with your eyes closed and your lips pulled tightly smiling and lulling your head from side to side like on an Aha song? Marks voice sound like his from some lost and forgotten swing band.You can definitely feel what he set out to do with this anthology of
pictures of the American countryside. His a great photographer and painter of words. It's rare when an artist achieves what he set out to do with such accuracy.
Some artists write songs, Mark Pickerel and his praying hands write albums.