Hydropods’s Gorilla and Poems of Pretense

Update: the guys at Hydropods were kind enough to send us a consumer copy which includes not only the audio Gorilla and Poems of Pretense disk, but also a 32 page booklet containing the poems themselves along with some great photos. There, now you have no reason not to purchase.

Gorilla and Poems of Pretense, a disk of spoken word poetry scored by music, packaged with a companion book (which was not included with the reviewable pre-release, but I anticipate is quite cool), has its highs, has its lows, and finds its strength amid such comfortable turbulence, both aesthetically and intellectually. You’ll know by the following line of the opening poem, Welcome, if Gorilla is for you:

Welcome Republicans and Americans

Though the disk doesn’t dwell on politics proper, there is a noticeable progressive slant to much of the material. Perhaps it is the nature of the medium that invites this observation; after all, you will never hear Ann Coulter doing a spoken word poetry album…thank god. But medium aside, poetry, by its nature, reflects on an emotional core more than most other forms, and progressives, liberals, in general tend to embrace emotion more willingly than other political persuasions. This is all to say that if you are a fan of forward-thinking poetry, you will likely dig Gorilla.

It is tempting to judge Gorilla as a performance disk; the nature of an audio/poetry meld has long been claimed, at least in popular fashion, by slam poets (RE: vocally dynamic performance poets). However, you aren’t getting performance here. You are getting poetry, only subtly enhanced by vocal acuity and background music. This distinction allows a welcomed confidence with the material. Not that performance necessarily masks sub par work when used in slam routines, but the potential is there, much more than with Gorilla’s comparatively straightforward delivery. John Dooley’s vocals lull at times, inspire at others, but satisfies always. The disk’s forte, if it has only one, lies with mashing Dooley’s confident, frank speech against lines like the following, from Circus Never Comes to Hell, creating a much appreciated dissonance:

There are days, as you may already know, that move slower than unpunished murder. There are arsonists who make more money than you.

Hydropods, whose previous work includes Lost Chance Sessions, RUTH, and Vulture and Other Stories, touts Gorilla as their most ambitious project to date. I haven’t the history with Hydropods to support such a statement, but considering the quality of Gorilla and Poems of Pretense, I’m eager to rifle through their back catalog.

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