Keller Williams is known by fans for his incredible guitar skills, as well as his prowess with a multitude of instruments, and his comical lyrics. He could be the love child of Trey Anastasio and a cooler-than-normal Weird Al Yankovic. His eighth album, “Home,” combines all of these elements to form a completely unique sound that pulls from a variety of different genres. “Home” is an exceptional album that abounds with funkiness.
For “Home,” Williams had intentions of making a double disc – one containing instrumental music, and the other vocal. However, he was forced to cut it down to one disc. The result is a CD where only half of the songs have lyrics.
“Nothing hurts a song more than lyrics. But what would I do with all these silly words that appear and bonk me on the head like little bunny Foo Foo?” Williams wrote on his Web site.
For the first time, one-man-jam-band Williams played all of the instruments himself, which included acoustic and electric guitars and basses, guitar synthesizers, piano, organ, percussion, drums, cymbals and all of the voices – featuring an unbeatable mouth flgel.
Williams has an easily identifiable distinctive sound that is fully present on this album. The opening track, “Love Handles,” starts with his signature pointed guitar style, before he comes in with lyrics like “If you need to get your love on, baby you can grab on to my love handles. It’s a double chin love, I have grown to accept it.” Thus is the tone set.
As the album progresses, he incorporates a myriad of other instruments. In “Tubeular,” he breaks down into a Blue Man Group-esque symphony of plastic tubes and whistles. “Butt Ass Nipple” is composed solely of percussion instruments – including Williams’ omnipresent vocal percussion. The majority of supplementary instruments he uses cannot be identified as things that have ever been heard before.
Distinctive on this album in particular is Williams’ efforts to draw from different genres of music. On “Dogs,” he brings in a reggae beat to underscore his dogs’ relationship. On “Casa Quetzal,” the sound is clearly Latin – complete with flourishing guitar and syncopated clapping. The end of the multi-tiered “Tubeular” brings in a sitar-sounding guitar to give the track an Indian tone.
Other tracks that include “Skitso,” “You Are What You Eat” and “Bitch Monkey” are built on the rock solid foundation of Williams’ outrageous guitar skills. Personal touches such as clips of Williams’ singing at ages three and seven make the album complete.
If it were possible to have a musical interpretation of daydreams, this album would be just that. Especially on the often warped instrumental tracks, it is easy to get sucked into the music and drift away. Each song seems to reveal Williams off in his own little world, and on “Home,” the listener is lucky enough to be able to join him there.
Mittelman can be reached at dmittelman@campustimes.org.
