Casey Crescenzo started out singing for the Receiving End of Sirens, a Boston
band that recorded Between the Heart and the Synapse (2005).
Crescenzo's solo project Dear Hunter dramatically increased his status to
singer-songwriter, composer, multi-instrumentalist and arranger.
The project
was born with the intention of crafting a six-album rock opera
set in the early 20th century.
Act I - The Lake South, The River North (Triple Crown, 2006), played
entirely by him except for the drums and a couple of guests,
More than the prog-rock melodramas like The Inquiry Of Ms Terri
Crescenzo excels at recreating the atmosphere of ages part, like the
decadent cabaret of the expressionist era in The Pimp And The Priest.
and the piano march with a nostalgic carillon in The Lake South
(before it turns symphonic, halfway between Vangelis and Michael Nyman).
With a broad range of styles that encompasses both the
a-cappella invocation Battesimo Del Fuoco and the
hard-rocking City Escape (littered with surrealistic detours, notably a recurring oneiric piano carillon)
the album is a testament to Crescenzo's musical acumen.
The more massive Act II - The Meaning Of & All Things Regarding Ms Leading (2007), that employed professional keyboardist (Luke Dent), percussionist (Sam Dent) and guitarist (Erick Serna), continued on the same track.
The loud and visceral The Procession and The Church And The Dime
evoke the prog-rock of Emerson Lake & Palmer and Colosseum.
The nine-minute The Lake And The River invests too much on pomp and
the power-ballad Red Hands exaggerates in pathos.
The album contains the first three parts of The Bitter Suite, that suffer
from the same problem.
At least the stately polka of closer Vital Vessals Vindicate mimicks the faux grandeur of the Queen and boasts the best choral singalong of the album.
The catchy ditty Smiling Swine and the skits of vintage musical styles (The Oracles On The Delphi Express, Blood Of The Rose) come as a relief.
Act III - Life And Death (2009) is generally more bombastic,
from the
virulent Brazilian dance In Cauda Venenum
to the grotesque military march The Tank (a career highlight).
Another highlight is Go Get Your Gun, a stately country-rock a` la Stan Ridgway, whereas overproduced
songs like Mustard Gas are the worst offenders: a lot of pounding and
shouting, but very little substance.
Grand closer Life And Death sounds like
a poor man's Pink Floyd.
The vignettes of old-time America are less entertaining than usual although
they are arranged more professionally
(The Poison Woman, This Beautiful Lie).
They don't benefit from the ponderous arrangements.
Dear Hunter took a different approach for the next monumental project:
The Color Spectrum (2011) was a nine-EP concept "album", each four-song EP being dedicated to a different color, for a grand total of 36 songs,
something like a humbler version of Magnetic Field's triple-album 69 Love Songs.
Nothing groundbreaking, but the sheer quantity and eclecticism are impressive.
Black opens the project with perhaps the most experimental music: the
surreal semi-industrial Never Forgive Never Forget, the
convoluted funk-rock of Filth And Squalor
the melodic noise-rock of Take More Than You Need, and the
neurotic post-metal of This Body.
Red boasts some of the most immediate blasts of adrenaline: the
vehement rock'n'roll of I Couldn't Do It Alone and especially A Curse Of Cynicism and the pounding pub singalong Deny It All.
Orange seems to hark back to the 1970s with the
distorted psych-rock of Echo, the
bluesy and quasi-doom elegy A Sea Of Solid Earth, and the
old-fashioned hard-rock of But There's Wolves.
Yellow is the melodic centerpiece, although it all amounts to just
catchy power-pop (She's Always Singing) and
standard pop muzak (A Sua Voz and The Dead Don't Starve).
Green is the intimate portrait: the
folkish bedroom lament Things That Hide Away, the
breezy country-rock ditty The Canopy and the
languid country litany Crow And Cackle.
Blue is the emotional counterpart, thanks to the
delicate lullaby Tripping In Triplets and especially to the
stately hymn-like The Collapse Of The Great Tide Cliffs and Trapdoor.
Indigo is the other experimental EP, containing the
ethereal ambient music of Mandala, the
pan-ethnic chant Progress and the
muffled and oneiric vignette Therma.
Violet tests the opposite end of the spectrum with the
symphonic and operatic Mr Malum and especially Lillian
and with the musichall skit Look Away.
White ends the project in a minor key, with the
stately piano ode Home and the
piano ballad No God.
Migrant (Equal Vision, 2013) was Crescenzo's first album not dedicated to a concept,
a lightweight work by comparison, and contains
two of his most elegant songs, Whisper and Kiss of Life.
Crescenzo also composed a symphony, Amour & Attrition.
The rock opera resumed on Act IV - Rebirth In Reprise (2015) and
insisted on the third chapter's
aesthetic of excess and exaggeration that ultimately sounds tedious
(The Old Haunt and Wait being prime examples).
The more or less catchy Waves is easily dwarfed by the less grandiloquent
numbers, such as
the cartoon music of Rebirth, the circus music of The Bitter Suite IV And V - The Congregation And The Sermon In The Silt (the album includes three more parts of The Bitter Suite)
and the clever novelty King Of Swords, in the vein of disco-music of the 1970s.
The nine minute A Night On The Town, that transitions from Brazilian carnival (reminiscent of In Cauda Venenum) to neoclassical lied, is another
waste of energies.
The story so far is of an anti-hero who is born and raised and (in Act II) goes to war and in Act III loses his brother and in Act IV decides to assume his brother's identity.
Just when the project seemed to be losing momentum Crescenzo found the right
balance.
Act V - Hymns With The Devil in Confessional (Equal Vision, 2016), his
best produced album yet, worked as a summary of all the tricks that Crescenzo
had used so far, and therefore relished more in variety than in pathos.
There are an emphatic pop ballad a` la Bon Jovi (The Flame) and
an existential-cosmic melodrama a` la David Bowie (A Beginning),
but there are also a bucolic neoclassical ballad (Melpomene)
and an aquarius-age MOR lullaby
(Cascade) with a theremin-like motif evoking movie soundtracks of the 1960s.
Crescenzo finds it natural to croon
arias that seem to come straight out of a Broadway musical (The Moon/Awake and The Haves Have Naught),
but he still excels at recreating music of decades earlier:
the single The Revival is a catchy collage of vintage cliches,
and Mr Usher sends us back to the 1950s with Frank Sinatra-style crooning, female doo-wop group, and jazzy drums and piano.
These are virtuoso confections of nostalgia.
The album's highlight, The Most Cursed of Hands/Who Am I, stands apart: a stately and theatrical folk-rock a` la Fairport Convention that segues into a pre-war French cabaret song.
The album is probably too long, but there is still one gem before the end: the
martial and theatrical The March, shouted a` la Meat Loaf with male backing vocals.
Reworked orchestral sections of Acts IV and V are performed by Brian Adam McCune and his Awesome Orchestra on The Fox and the Hunt (2020).
The mini-album
The Indigo Child (2021) contains the
soundtrack to a short film titled "Cycle 8".
Antimai (2022) is a concept album set in an apocalyptic fantasy world, basically an expansion and refinement of "The Indigo Child".
It continued Crescenzo's transition towards a form of
grand rocking pop that, save the orchestration, falls in the tradition of Todd Rundgren.
The orchestration, in turn, is a serious version of
Frank Zappa's mock-symphonic arrangements.
The bombastic Ring 8 - Poverty does not waste time plunging into this
tense sonic world of brass, xylophone and female choir.
Remove the bombast and what is left is trivial melodies
and propulsive rhythms, from the
funk-rock fanfare Ring to the raunchy
soul-rock of Patrol,
and lyrics that may or may not be interesting enough.
Forget the storytelling, and
the nine-minute Ring 5 - Middle Class is de facto a melodic fantasy
in the old manner of
Genesis and
Van Der Graaf Generator, spanning Broadway-style arias and jazzy atmospheres.
Ditto for the ten-minute Ring 3 - Luxury, which is even more convoluted and theatrical, basically a multi-part suite.
