The “Buffalo Fun-A-Day” project, promoted by Sugar City, encourages artists to do something they think is “fun or interesting everyday in February,” to document that process and then share it with the community. Last year, local singer-songwriter, Alex Berkley, partook in the project, resulting in his album, 28 Days of Fun. This year, he partook in the project again, following up with a sequel, and our Album of the Week: 28 Days of Fun 2: Sick of the Sound of My Voice.
The first 28 Days of Fun record actually featured 28 separate songs, written and recorded each day of February 2013. Berkley took a slightly different approach on 28 Days of Fun 2, writing separate songs each day of the third week of February 2014 (“My Daily Diary 2/15/2014” through “My Daily Diary 2/21/2014”) and then writing seven separate pieces of music, that would eventually form a single song, during the first, second, and last weeks of February (“We Never Close,” “In His Hands,” and “We Never Open”).
The three lengthier songs provide a nice balance to the manic one-to-two-minute day trips and seem to have allowed Berkley an opportunity to open up a bit more, creatively, by focusing on a particular piece for a longer period of time. (However, given that the conceit of the project is to create a stand-alone piece of work each day of the month, the longer songs end up sounding more like suites, or variations on themes, rather than traditionally structured songs.)
Regardless, the musical accomplishment on the album, given the limitation placed on its creation, is remarkable. Berkley makes churning out catchy, thoughtful guitar-based music sound effortless, though it does leave one longing to hear what more he might be capable of without the month-long time constraint. (For an idea: see the excellent Lists and Listlessness.) The 28 Days of Fun albums, while smart and impressive in their capacity as creative experiments, make a proper full-length follow-up to Lists (hopefully with “the Atlanta Falcons” in tow) seem that much more vital.
As for the songs we do have at the moment, the “Daily Diary” section of the album will probably sound the most familiar to those who have heard Berkley’s work in the past. These are seven short, acoustic-guitar based songs, some of which feature a surprise guest-instrument (banjo on the 17th, what sounds like an accordion? on the 18th and 21st, harmonica on the 20th), and all of which feature impressively written melodies that would probably get stuck in your head if they weren’t so fleeting, (with the 16th and 20th especially strong).
The songs are exactly what they say they are: straightforward accounts of the daily activities of Alex Berkley from Saturday, February 15, 2014 through to the following Friday (though, through the power of deduction, it appears each song refers to activities that actually took place the day prior). It shouldn’t surprise anyone who listened to The Star Trek Movies EP that Berkley spends a lot of time with various forms of sci-fi geekery (Return of the Jedi, Star Trek, comic books, X-Men, Sea Quest) and the numerous Buffalo references on the album might have broken whatever record Jack Topht previously held for local name-drops in a 15-minute span of music (Elmwood, Allentown, Record Theatre, Steak and Cake, Nietzsche’s, Hardware, Casa Di Pizza - to name only a few).
Overall, Berkley seems to spend a lot of time doing what most of us are probably doing: hanging out with a significant other, a dog, various friends, commenting on the weather, eating, playing music, watching television. The most impressive part of these songs might be how willing Berkley is to truthfully set forth the relatively mundane nature of a winter’s week in Buffalo. Moving your car to the other side of the street and getting a bagel at Coffee Culture isn’t exactly glamorous stuff, but it’s happening. He gets a lot of mileage in these seven songs out of not trying too hard to make these everyday activities seem more important than they are, and letting the events speak for themselves to show how they naturally become important in the way that they accumulate to become your life.
As stated before, Berkley seems to have had a little more room to play around and experiment with the other three songs on the album, each of which were written and recorded over the space of a week.
“We Never Close” (almost certainly a reference to the infamous Bird and Elmwood convenience store, though it doesn’t actually seem to be mentioned in the song) and “We Never Open” serve as bookends for the album. “Close” and “Open” feature a more full-band, electric sound with various instruments weaving in and out of the separate sections and a welcome, spoken-word reading of Ray Bradbury’s The Martian Chronicles on “Open.” Both suites contain many strong ideas that could, foreseeably, have served well as fleshed-out, stand-alone songs. (Particularly of note: the section that begins at around 2:20 of “Close” with one of the album’s best lyrics: “I’m gonna lie down dying in the place I was born, I’m a sad sorry sucker for the world I adore.”)
The most cohesive piece here though is “In His Hands,” which, seemingly, starts out as a cover of the traditional American spiritual song, “He’s Got the Whole World in His Hands,” but gradually becomes something much more. Musically, the song moves from a cappella, to folk tune, to sludgy blues-rock, to hymnal, to something vaguely psychedelic, and back to gentle guitar picking. As it does so, the lyrics mutate from the traditional version to Berkley’s own take on what exactly it means (sometimes, literally) for “the whole world” to be in God’s hands. It’s a song that’s so obviously ripe for parody that, in retrospect, it’s kind of surprising nobody has done it yet (confirmed, on my part, by a one-minute Google search).
There are several very funny and poignant lines, that are probably better heard than read, but the real treat comes at the end of the song. After musically revving up, and increasingly calling into question God’s intentions with all of the odd things he’s carrying around, Berkley settles back down with a soft, acoustic guitar and pulls a neat trick with an homage to a very well known song that’s so surprising and touching the first time you hear it, I think it’s better not to spoil it here. It’s an honest and simple moment, exemplary of Berkley when he’s at his best, and it works like a charm.
Lucky for you, you’ll have an opportunity to see one of the strongest songwriters in Buffalo when you (surely) come see Alex Berkley (with his band, the Atlanta Falcons) live at Buffablog's 4th Birthday Party, Saturday, March 29th at Duke’s.
