The Cairo Gang - Biography
The Cairo Gang is primarily the love child of understated multi-instrumentalist wunderkind Emmett Kelly, a gifted singer-songwriter who is firmly plugged into the electrical socket of Chicago’s soft-rock scene. Kelley has a wonderful gift for fusing gentle, ambient textures, acoustic guitar passages and a gauzy vocal delivery, without surrendering an intrinsic urgency; it’s a valiant effort, one that prevents Cairo Gang from liquefying into soggy, Emo mediocrity. Instead, Kelly manages to nail some arch commentary and aural directives to the door of the church of indie rock, while pursuing his personal agendas with subtlety, grace and wit. The Cairo Gang doesn’t have an extensive output to date, but the existing releases are awash in promise and care and craft, and Kelly certainly has one key skill that bodes well for his future: a keen ability to network with other musicians, and to sculpt finely wrought collaborations that perfectly augment his own skills and talents.
The eponymous debut, Cairo Gang (2006 Narnack Records) demonstrates a sparkling array of late-night, candlelit vibes, with rich instrumentation performed in the rickety, tottering fashion so popular with the kids today. The opening track sets the tone. “Antwardee” is replete in glorious menace, as crystalline guitars chime. “Resist” has a summery pop sheen that faintly echoes the mid-60s psychedelia of Los Angeles stalwarts Love (Kelley is also a native Angeleno, transplanted to the Windy City), minus, of course, the (now) conventional performance idiom. “A Hammer for the Temple” pushes the gentle, batik-draped mood even further, as it twirls through passages of backwards masking. Kelly has an excellent grasp of the nuances that reside in the DMZ between folk and psych, and if the result is vaguely reminiscent of yesterday’s artists filtered through a contemporary bias, well, there are worse things than being characterized as a freak-folk version of Neil Young or Arthur Lee or Gene Clarke.
Cairo Gang ends with a spate of engaging songs. “Last Time Since September” is a more straightforward, driving number with nominal accompaniment; “Zyczgkowy” successfully juxtaposes flutes and tin pipes with acoustic guitar and shrieking, bowed cymbals; “Funnel Cloud” segues from upbeat singing to extended, droning guitars whose threatening sense of peril suit the song’s title. The closer, “Me and You” is one of the simplest tracks on the album, and one of the most effective. Kelly’s vocals are especially audible (that’s not always the case), and the wistful, plaintive lyrics are economically punctuated with flute and bongo. Cairo Gang is a purposeful debut, one that posited Kelly front and center in the music scene that ripples across Chicago. It also brought him to the attention of the king of off-kilter folk-rock warblings, Bonnie Prince Billy, also known as Palace, Palace Bros., and just plain ol’ Will Oldham.
Wonder Show of the World (2010 Drag City) is equitably billed to Bonnie Prince Billy & the Cairo Gang, and it’s a splendidly effective pairing. Oldham has a bit more facility and flourish to his guitar playing, so he doesn’t hesitate to slip in an occasional lick, which benefits the material; he also lends just a touch of variety to the rhythms and tempos. For his part, Kelly is a perfect counterpoint to Oldham’s unmistakable vocals. There’s a dark and lonely tenor to Wonder Show of the World, as it vacillates between lament and prayer before teetering on the brink of quiet madness. Songs like “With Cornstalks or Among Them,” “The Sounds Are Always Begging,” “That’s What Our Love Is” and “Merciless and Great” all traffic in a stark admixture of poignancy and despair.
While that sort of windswept mélange is what we’ve come to expect from the wildly prolific Oldham, it’s a very pleasant turn for Kelly, who is thoroughly up to the task. In fact, on the opening track, as he takes the high harmony, you could be forgiven for thinking for a moment that you were hearing some especially raw demo for Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme. Now, maybe Simon and Garfunkel comparisons don’t carry tons of critical cachet in the hipster circles in Ukrainian Village, but it’s meant as a compliment. Emmett Kelly and Cairo Gang are listening to the past and looking to the future, and in the meantime, making some unobtrusively fine albums. Kelley’s songsmithing may result in unpolished gems, and his music may be opaque, but the value is completely transparent.
