There are at least seven thousand things that could go tragically wrong when a University of Nebraska at Omaha student/home-recordist decides to write a "home symphony" based on a fictional history of the local thoroughbred race track, and then record it all by himself using only a Radio Shack microphone. Miraculously, Doug Kabourek, the one-man music-making machine behind Golden Sand and the Grandstand, has managed to avoid virtually all of those pitfalls. That alone should be enough to assure him a Grammy in the "Conceptual Pop Album Recorded at Home with a Radio Shack Microphone" category.
First off, it's well worth saying that the sound quality on this disc is just fine. It's not pristine or glowing, but for a one-person home recording of some pretty complicated music it sounds really good. Give Mr. Kabourek another pat on the hiney!
This is pop music, no doubt about it. Tuneful, catchy and clever, the songs are pretty firmly planted in indie-pop land, though there are a few nods to the world of drum machines and strange bleeping noises. Working backwards from its slow, sad demise, the tunes detail the history of the race track, the people who built it, the events that shaped it. Most of the songs seem to be told from the perspective of a slightly romantic, slightly doomed boy who was there for it all.
"Mr. Tizzy's tomatoes" tells the story of the disgruntled neighbor who blames his garden's poor performance on the vibrations caused by the horse races. It's a curious combination of narration, guitar pop and jingling bells. "Falling Off A Star" is kind of a high school musical theater number, but with more clever lyrics. A luckless jockey with a perennial crush is at the center of "Again This Summer": "I'll love you again this summer and try to ignore what I know goes on in Jacob's van."
I don't know what "Kissed in Stereo" is about; a big winner, I guess. It really doesn't matter, though, because it has a nice chorus and some really goofy vocal effects. That's enough for me! "Believe In Being Barefoot" is probably the most romantic track on the CD, with sweet, innocent lyrics and convincing, earnest singing.
Following the ten race track tunes are a few other songs that I don't think are part of the same story. They seem a bit more generic than the others, but that's probably just because I've grown accustomed to listening to these songs and trying to piece together how they fit into the larger story of the race track. Track twelve is actually pretty good; it sounds like it was recorded directly into an old school mono tape recorder, with the recorder's gain turned up way too high.
Golden Sand and the Grandstand is a fun, creative and rather odd project. It works much better than I would ever have guessed it would, particularly since I'm usually pretty skeptical about this sort of story-based pop project. While the songs could be a bit more adventurous, they work well here, and Kabourek has done a good job of weaving them into a cohesive, enjoyable whole.
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