If your knowledge of
Chilly Gonzales stretches little further than the piano plonking and tap dancing of Never Stop, not a semiquaver beyond the saccharine faux-disco of You Can Dance then The Unspeakable Chilly Gonzales may just banish your voice from your mouth. From melodramatic opener Supervillain Music to ulcer-inducing, tongue-in-cheek closer Shut up and Play the Piano, Gonzales (aka Jason Beck) comes across as a sedate Marshall Mathers reclining atop a sequin-strewn grand piano, simultaneously self-depreciating and self-celebrating. The self-professed "musical genius" weighs up the pros and cons of his existence on Self Portrait, painting a particularly dark figure when confessing to dancing to Viva la Vida in solitude, whilst the juxtaposition of Arabian/arabesque instrumentation and grotesque lyrical hedonism contained within Party In My Mind proves evocative of The Pussycat Dolls pole dancing to John Williams' Return of the Jedi score. Two wrongs almost make a right. Different Kind Of Prostitute sounds like the Bloodhound Gang coining expletives in the back pews of an orchestra backing up Weird Al, before Rap Race ridicules the heinous commercialisation of the genre, Gonzales affirming that "the next Einstein will write rhymes". Gawky, stilted delivery here helps to create something cohesive, as the overt element of parody anchors the fidgeting genre-hopper in a distinctive sound and style, and one that is continued throughout the remainder of the record, Beans its highlight. Tales of pedantically counting said seeds are intertwined in breathtaking hymnal backdrop, in cinematic grandeur, yet on balance bemusement outweighs amusement and, as Gonzales concedes to feeling like "someone else" when employing his vocal chords to spit facetious, witty lyricisms, some may well wish for the unspeakable to remain speechless...
