Slim Cessna's Auto Club - Cipher (2008)

Slim Cessna's Auto Club - Cipher (2008)

Jay Munly is a scary son of a bitch.

I still recall, two years ago, standing along the wall of a small concert venue while Slim Cessna's Auto Club's opening band entertained the crowd. Less than fifteen feet to my right, alone in the corner, with nothing but space in between us, was a tall, rail-thin, bald corpse of a man donning a cowboy hat and all black. I knew it was Munly, and as much as I wanted to approach him and show my appreciation for his having recorded one of the greatest and most underrated albums of the decade (2004's self-titled Munly & The Lee Lewis Harlots), to be honest, I was kind of afraid to bother him. He seemed polite yet annoyed with the enthusiastic, less perceptive couple who had come up to him ten minutes earlier, so I was fine forgoing showering him with gushing fanboy praise if it meant giving him the isolation that his body language and music led me to believe he prefers.

Once on stage, however, he seems to transform. He, along with the equally tall and creepy Slim Cessna, moved around in skeletal, seemingly puppet-string controlled motions and clapped and dropped to their knees under the weight and power of their music. They reached their hands in the air and sang with passion, pleading toward the ceiling lights while The Reverend Dwight Pentacost (I shit you not) wails on a banjo like you've never seen someone wail on a banjo before. This, my friends, is gothic country Slim Cessna-style, coming off less like a concert and more like a sermon in some strange backwoods church that any stranger would be so unfortunate to have stumbled upon. I've not had another equally enjoyable and unsettling concert experience before or since.

Cipher captures this energy pretty well. The songs are both urgent and catchy, with lots of variety that keeps it from ever getting boring. Sometimes dark and sometimes lighthearted, even the hilarious banter between Munly and Slim is present, giving it the same feel of spontaneity of a live performance. The band are energetic and entertaining, singing songs related to the praising of Jesus or the loss of faith or mocking Jesus or...hell, I don't know. Even reading the lyrics sheet I can't really tell what this band's motivation is; whether they are mocking faith or embracing it seems to come into question from one song to the next. Or perhaps the point is the uncertainty and the fragility of faith.

Either way, I wouldn't feel any more comfortable playing this around God-fearing relatives than I would Satanic black metal. In fact, for all the noise and growling and aggression and dark atmosphere and scary make-up and long hair and terrible band logos involved in metal, I doubt any of them could strike fear into the hearts of in-laws as much as this tall, quiet, skinny country singer from Denver could.


Score: 8.5/10


"Americadio"


"Magalina Hagalina Boom Boom"