Artist: Geoff Berner
Album: Klezmer Mongrels (2009)
Genre: folk, klezmer
Sounds like: Moishe’s Bagel, Jason Webley

(strongly recommended***)

1. Shut In ***
2. Luck In Exile
3. The Whiskey ***
4. Half German Girlfriend ***
5. King Of The Gangsters
6. No Tabacco
7. Play, Gypsy, Play ***
8. Authentic Klezmer Wedding Band
9. One Shoe ***
10. High Ground
11. Fukher ***

There is something so enticingly warped about this canadian songwriter.  With his crude sexual references, politically incorrect humor, and bitter social commentary, Geoff Berner is anything but subtle.  Klezmer Mongrels is (sadly) Berner’s last in his trilogy of klezmer themed albums, for which he traveled all the way to Romania to study.

This album is entertaining on so many levels. Not only are Berner’s cynicism and bad puns hilarious (”Fukher” will make you laugh out loud regardless of whether or not you know Yiddish), but the sounds that man can conjure forth from an accordion are downright ungodly, (you know, in the orgasmic kind of way).  He sings like he’s singing to you personally, commenting on his own lyrics within his lyrics with refreshing frankness.  His accordion is accompanied by the violin of Diona Davies, formally of Po’ Girl, and Wayne Adams on drums, the paradigm menage-a-trois.

Grade: A

—Alice