Bad Cello's premieres the re-mixed and re-mastered version of “Not That I've Changed”, originally off the debut album Takes. Fronted by Utica, NY's Zeno Pittarelli, he operates on an indie folk ethic that organizes all instrumentation and lyrical writing in accordance to the heart's directives. Lyman Christensen's re-working of Takes presents a new mastering and mix that binds the instrumental passions together, stitched with the threads that mend broken hearts and exhibit the lasting care that continues long after the fling has passed away.
Pittarelli begins “Not That I've Changed” with a eulogy for the halycyon haze of youth, complete with dramatic organ accompaniment. “At 23, in my grave, would you speak my name?” An interrupted funeral fourth wall finds the song's narrator thinking outside the casket about legacy, the lasting of bonds, and whether or not thoughts still play together between and beyond the mortal coil.
While entertaining traditional and conventional arrangements with Christensen's benediction, the traditional verse chorus structure is foregone in the name of musical expressionism in a minute and 22 seconds time. “Timid I am, tired no more, sleep until the summer tears, bring flowers through the floor”. Borrowing a pinch of that old western Lee Hazlewood thinking and wisdom of, “We All Make the Flowers Grow”, Zeno divulges in the delights of the rest found while wading in the Hades, Styx river while acknowledging the ecological cycles and orders of life. Between enriching the soil through the imagined decomposition that is only matched by the tears of the bereaved six feet above; the worlds of the living and the dead are not only linked by heart and memory but connected meanings within the song's own creative ecology.
At the heart of everything is the statement of, “you mean something to me”. This informs the beginning where wondering whether or not a loved one will utter your name or say some words in closing thrives on cherished affections that are stronger than mortality. Despite the moribund subject matters, the song pushes forward on a drive of excited newness, where the statement of “it's not that I've changed” celebrates and searches the rare permanence that is hard to find in the waking world and is perhaps guaranteed in that next, great, forever unknown.
Bad Cello's debut Takes originally was released in the fall of 2012 and has been re-mixed and re-mastered by Lyman Christensen for re-release this coming June 1 from Double Double Whammy.
Bad Cello also has a 7″ EP slated for release this summer dropping on both Double Double Whammy and Miscreant Records.
Tour Dates:
April
20 Geneseo, NY at Flyday Festival
24 SUNY Purchase at Whitson’s with iji, The Dreebs, Colby Nathan
