Corpse Flower (CD)
Mike Patton , Jean-Claude Vannier
Amoeba Review
07/28/2020
Mike Patton goes lounge lizard on Corpse Flower, his new collaboration with iconic French composer/arranger Jean-Claude Vannier. At various times, Patton affects the POV of a world-weary chanteur, channels the urbane growl of Tom Waits, and gets down-in-the-gutter vulgar. Meanwhile Vannier provides cinematic, torch-carrying melodies that harken back to the fabled, romantic post-war years in Paris. Corpse Flower is the sort of ingenious record that seems so odd and yet works so perfectly — the type of album you didn’t know you needed in your life until you gave it a spin. With a collaboration this successful, you’ll want to keep this album in constant rotation.