Casey Dienel
Issue #27
Wind-Up Canary (Hush)
By Elisabeth Donnelly
Published: March 1st, 2006 | 12:00am
Casey Dienel is a piano-playing songwriter with a singular knack for writing catchy music with quirky detail. On her debut album, Wind-Up Canary, the Massachusetts native-cum-Brooklyn resident details eccentrics and lovers with her charming eye.
Opener “Dr. Monroe” has Dienel muttering in a jazzy, sweet voice about a man who “makes a killer first impression but he smells like turpentine.” The songs manage to be both hooky and theatrical, with a variety of influences from Tin Pan Alley to Kurt Weill to Randy Newman. She plays her lonely ivories, the focus of most of the songs, as a strong, off-kilter instrument. In the surging “Frankie and Annette,” a pair of Red Sox lovers on the lam, and in the punchy “The Coffee Beanery,” she sings, “He’s writing me every week about the big, beautiful world, I kind of want to be a part of it.” “All Or Nothing” is an invigorating piece on which Dienel sings about daring to love over squawking brass: “I still have your old t-shirt. It’s starting to smell like dust.” The brass and drums are exquisite on “Everything,” providing ample support to Dienel’s opera-trained notes on the chorus.
The lo-fi, demo-sounding production of Wind-Up Canary does well for the album’s songs, but its occasional flat notes remain the biggest liability. That quibble aside, Wind-Up Canary is ultimately a striking debut, introducing the world to a fully formed girl on her piano who is a complete original.
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