from Crossroads, March/April 1997, v2, n1

This here Rose Feller from Chicago sounds a bit cracked, with his mildly hysterical nasal vocals, ranging in paradoxical quips ("I used to be a friend of mine...") to eclectic folky music beset by frequent unexpected chord changes. But sometimes, as in the strange case of Naked in a Trailer, the cracks are letting more in than out.

For a quick introduction, start with "Mr. Bigger," a modern Paul Bunyan tale of a man more than big, he's tall, and more than ice, he's cold. The lyric refuses to cohere into simple sense, yet remains sensible, not unlike those of Elvis Costello. The title track flashes with wacky verbal pyrotechnics about such life goals as water-skiing the Matterhorn, but is grounded in very real doubt about a personal future ("Could I survive a year in prison? Could I survive a year in France?")

Rose can also support an extended voyage into the heart of this challenging musical and lyrical universe, as in "Channel to Channel," where, operating on only half a brain, he confronts baby Jesus, a naked and tattooed anchorwoman, and perhaps his own demons. But it's all relative, after all, as illustrated in "Everything is Flexible." Al Rose's music is a strange, sometimes dissonant, melange of folk and rock, but the main attraction to Naked in A Trailer is his perverse talent for molding assemblages of twisted lyrical cliches in surprising new configurations.

-Jim Foley