The Art of Storytelling Reviewed: Benjy Ferree's Come Back to the Five and Dime Bobby Dee Bobby Dee and Telepathe's Dance Mother

Clear and linear storytelling has never been Benjy Ferree’s greatest strength; he’s more of an idea guy. To wit, the D.C. singer/songwriter’s sophomore record, Come Back to the Five and Dime Bobby Dee Bobby Dee, has a pretty good hook—it’s a concept album dedicated to fallen child actor Bobby Driscoll—but it doesn’t pay as much attention to detail.

Ferree is no biographer, but if it’s facts about Driscoll you’re after, there’s always the Internet. And Bobby Dee, with its doo-wop vocals, glam riffs, and bizzaro cartoon creepiness, is at least interesting enough to get you Googling.

Driscoll was one of Disney’s first major child stars, appearing in live action films such as Song of the South and voicing the animated title character in 1953’s Peter Pan. But a severe case of acne, acquired during puberty, eventually got him booted out of the Magic Kingdom. From there, Driscoll took a surreal and tragic spin—he fell into heroin addiction, drifted on the periphery of Andy Warhol’s Factory scene, and was eventually found dead in an abandoned New York City tenement at the age of 31.

Ferree attempts to channel Driscoll, miring himself in the actor’s bad vibes and Neverland separation anxiety, and succeeds in capturing the mood of his tale, if not the particulars.

“There were footsteps on the roof/But there is no proof/Or reason not to hide,” he sings on “Fear,” a comic, spiritual-tinged exploration of paranoia and dread that’s at least as frightening as the pink elephant scene in Dumbo.

For the most part, the music on Bobby Dee—blues-and-gospel-inflected rock with intentionally over-the-top vocal arrangements—sounds kind of like Marc Bolan sitting in with the Country Bear Jamboree. The strange juxtaposition between Merrie Melodies and shattered innocence actually suits the subject matter perfectly (See: “Pisstopher Chrisstopher” and “Tired of Being Good”).

Eventually, Ferree even manages to get specific and squeeze in some esoteric detail. “Drink all the water/What was a lake is now a crater,” Ferree sings on “What Would Pecos Do?” referencing the 1948 short film “Pecos Bill,” in which Driscoll appeared. It’s a nice detail, but ultimately unimportant. It’s the bigger human tragedy that really matters here, and Ferree gets the larger point across just fine.

Ferree may be clumsy with his storytelling, but it’s tough to find any kind of shape or form in Telepathe’s billowing atmospheres. The debut album from Brooklyn electro duo Telepathe almost entirely ignores nuance in its relentless pursuit of cool.

But Dance Mother isn’t cool in the way that Lil Wayne, iPhones, or Converse All-Stars are. The disc is more like a cup of coffee that’s been left on a desk for three days—cool only in that it is devoid of heat.

With its girl-group vocals, crunk samples, and laptop beats, the band’s early EPs suggested a sort of Bananarama/Lil’ Jon hybrid that should have boiled on the dance floor, but most of Dance Mother just chills.

It may not be entirely the group’s fault, though. TV on the Radio’s David Sitek produced the album, and his strategy seems to be that if a style worked for his band, it will somehow work for this one. He dials up the vintage synths, hires the horn section from Antibalas, and drowns everything in reverb—just as he’s done for every artist he’s ever worked with, from Celebration to ScarJo.

The production overwhelms Telepathe, leaving songs like “In Your Line” and “Can’t Stand It” sounding a little like Dear Science B-sides.

There’s a chance Melissa Livaudais and Busy Gangnes just sat by passively as Sitek’s doused their fire. During a show last year at the Black Cat, both women seemed positively bored to death by their own songs. Their vocal performances on Dance Mother display a similarly lackadaisical attitude—once uttered, lines hang in the air like damp sheets on a clothesline or just get blotted out entirely by the psychedelic wall of sound. Which isn’t to say that there aren’t any decent songs on Dance Mother—many of the songs are good, or at least have good elements.

Telepathe is adept at blending ideas from hip-hop mixtapes into Cocteau Twins-style atmospherics. It works well on “So Fine,” with its stumbling chorus hook, and even better for “Trilogy: Breath of Life, Crimes and Killings, Threads and Knives” which effortlessly shifts from haunting ambience to blaring crunk keyboards and back in its six-plus minutes. But the rest of the album is sort of forgettable. Telepathe borrowed astutely from modern hip-hop, but they probably should have borrowed more—more of the bass, more of the personality, more of the attitude. Apparently they grabbed only the 808s and the weed. Does that make them cool, or just cold?