I’ve just listened to Ray Condo & His Ricochets’ new disc for the seventh time, and I’m ready to go hunt down someone to teach me how to swing dance. Might have to stop at the thrift store for the right outfit first, though, and maybe get a bouffant.
It’s all in the ambience, which is at the heart of Door To Door Maniac, a dozen cover tunes delivered in rapid-fire, 33-minute succession by this Canadian outfit. Condo runs through the rockabilly cookie-cutter of musical genre wrenching, the outcome of which usually bores me to tears. A fine line separates making a song your own and homogenizing another artist’s ingenuity to give the shut-up-and-dance crowd something to shut up and dance to. But Condo and his up-to-the-task Ricochets pull it off, and admirably.
Door To Door Maniac drags you into a mid-twentieth-century time warp and makes you glad to be there. The standout is “I Lost My Gal In The Yukon”, a ’40s cornball tune about someone’s girl running off with a trapper, featuring ukulele-ish guitar and mandolin and Condo’s tongue-in-cheek, albeit professional, crooning.
What separates Condo from others of this ilk is his band: Stephen Nikleva on lead guitar and mandolin, Jimmy Roy on steel guitar and second lead, Clive Jackson on bass and fiddle, and John Cody on drums. In addition to a voice that was made to sing this stuff, Condo plays an appropriately syrupy alto sax. The guitar work is smooth as silk, solos on all instruments are noticeable without being overbearing, and the campiness is in the style, not the substance. It’s obvious these guys take their work seriously — even if they are having a ball.
