Non-financial Instruments

Amanda Chaudhary and her Meow Meow Band here with January Suborbital Denomination (CATSYNTH RECORDS ACHS 2718) – her second release featuring this combo (the first we noted in 2022 with her sitting on the white sofa in her smart crimson outfit). Many of the same musicians are featured – Steve Adams, Joshua Marshall, Jamaaladeen Tacuma, G Calvin Weston, Myles Boisen, Chris Grady…plus singer Sami Stevens who does the vocals on the four songs.

Once again the pleasure we get from this music is due to many elements – strong melodies, watertight arrangements and playing by the team, the superb synth and electric piano work of Chaudhary, tasty jazz chords. And of course the bright upbeat mood of these very accessible pieces. Her music isn’t always especially “experimental”, apart from perhaps the cyborg-inflected episodes like ‘Ghanaplasticity’, but then it’s also not easy to pigeonhole it for a mainstream audience. It’s not just the fun-loving approach to musical genres (including steel pans, sitar-like instrumental breaks, funky rhythms, 1970s soul, psychedelic touches and electronic decorations), but there is something endearingly “quirky” about her song lyrics which may trip up the unwary. I personally think it’s great people still care enough to compose an entire “jazz ballad” song in praise of the “Rambutan” fruit from South-East Asia, or use a song to propose “National Chocolate Oat Milk Day” as a national holiday in the calendar. As a life-long reader of Mad Magazine, I am well aware of Don Martin’s 1963 story about “National Gorilla-Suit Day”, which (absurdly enough) became a real “thing” across the United States with at least one city where we can find devoted zany-types dressing up as gorillas once a year. Which shows us that satire can never go far enough.

I should perhaps add that Amanda Chaudhary is not a satirist as far as I can see, and she and her band are clearly having a great time making this gorgeous music – the joy is infectious as soon as you listen. When Frank Zappa wrote “silly” songs about details like dental floss and tweezers, there was very little joy in his heart, and he took a perverse pleasure in the absurdities of everyday life. No such misanthropy here, just beautiful tunes and great playing and real warmth. But she loves cats, so what else could we expect? (16/07/2024)