from Uri Caine Ensemble - The Othello Syndrome (2008)

Under a certain post-modern light, it's ironic to think how unfaithful this eclectic adaptation of themes from Verdi's operatic adaptation of Shakespeare's Othello can be. One could even conceive of the making of the record itself as a meta-setting for a reboot of the play (a perfect task for Pirandello reborn), except in this version it would hardly be necessary for any Iago to budge a single scheming finger, as instead we would have Verdi at Caine's throat right from the start for all his actual horsing around with his muse. 

For people who have spent some time listening to Italian prog (that vast legion), the record can also be of some interest for (quite unwittingly, no doubt) driving home the point of how much the genre (though not the necessarily its most interesting practitioners) culled from the operatic tradition of the country; and that's actually where things get at least occasionally entertaining here - when Caine really shows his chops, playing with compositional dynamics.

Unfortunately, that is only a small portion of it, because the whole thing is indeed another one of Caine's shots at delivering some sort of musical gesamtkunstwerk, from a period when his ambition got the best of him, making him think he could do just about anything - in this case, meshing not only opera and jazz, but also pop, hip-hop, Broadway musicals, and a dozen other things at which I'm sure he thought he was equally adept - but I'm not convinced. 

So then, as the proceedings reach their end, amidst all the wasted characters and confetti shrapnel strewn across the floors, what might still be rescued from this over the top crossover kitsch-fest? Why, the disheveled "Drinking Song", of course: not only does it do a good job of representing those 5 minutes in the long process of getting drunk that actually get to be fun (after the build-up and before the downward spiral), but also, in the spirit in which that type of song was intended, it can be imbibed with the hope that, come the morning after, all our memories of the rest of this shindig (and of all the world has come to, if you're in that mood), will only be a blur.