“The Trouble With Being Born” serves as an introduction of sorts, sadly. Sadly, because there is no other track akin to its style on the rest of Vassalotti’s LP, Broken Rope. Yes, the mythical one-two medley of the Thus Splice Zarathustra track “Maly Kitezh” and the beginning buzz and pour of the industrialized “Bolshoy Kitezh” comes close to matching “The Trouble With Being Born” in cinematic image and DNA. However, they are panoramic, epic, with strong volition and fantasy, part of another family. “Born” remains an only child, orphaned at the onset, abandoned by an unnamed French score from days of yore, up for adoption as a 21st century neo-giallo theme.
No, not sadly, Broken Rope is a delight. It is non-repeating, and therefore interesting, and therefore a success, not as disheveled or scatterbrained or capricious as your typical solo side project. There’s a trace of mild-manneredness that isolationist recordings bring, only a trace; professionalism abounds, as does good common songwriting sense. Sensibility is a word we hear a lot, about everything; here it applies. Some tracks on Vassalotti’s Broken Rope could bother to reproduce, multiplied until full length, “The Trouble With Being Born” being one among those tracks. P.T. Barnum would be proud.
More about: David Vassalotti
