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Deciphering Slim Cessna’s Auto Club

Slim Cessna's Auto Club: Photo by Gary Isaacs In the song “Mark of Vaccination” by Slim Cessna’s Auto Club, a confused and slow-minded bumpkin of a narrator confesses, “I cannot cipher, I cannot read.”

He’s not the only one who’s perplexed.

Slim Cessna’s Auto Club puzzles people. Does the Denver-based sextet play country and western? Or alt-country? Gospel? Or, essentially, cabaret music to drink by? While there are traditional elements within the arrangements, what to make of the occasional banjo-feedback solo or bowed and distorted pedal steel guitar? The stand-up bass weaves melodically, not in thunka-thunka fashion. The drums—not limited to one-two, one-two beats—add exuberant polyrhythms. The music undulates like a bull whip. Lyrics, akin to literary short stories, waver between the sacred and the secular, the goodhearted and the gothic. Among his endearing vocalizations, the band’s namesake coos and yodels. Altogether, it’s a mixture of high art and cornpone.

by: Gregory Daurer