The Way I Feel Inside: Inspired By The films Of Wes Anderson (TRRcollective)
Marty Isenberg
Raleased July 2023
DownBeat Four-and-a-Half-Star Review
YouTube:
https://music.youtube.com/playlist?list=OLAK5uy_n-Yylagsr63CCxjUUYAv-i-uDAVYdmnjA
Spotify:
About:
“My fascination with Wes Anderson’s films dates back to my adolescent years. For my taste, no filmmaker has ever used songs in their films so poignantly and created such a unique and singular musical ambiance. There is a “mixtape” aspect to a Wes Anderson playlist: an intimate collection of one’s favorite songs, as if each song was painstakingly curated by combing through used record stores to find the most hip and heartbreaking music yet undiscovered by teenage ears. It evokes the childlike wonder of being immersed in a storybook and taps into the pain of loneliness from being an outsider.
There’s something beautiful about creating a collage of sounds that aren’t supposed to fit together, and yet they form a complex picture of a life with contradictions. It’s that unconventional juxtaposition that drew me to this project and inspired me to explore this music through a new genre: jazz. A mixtape is a personal, intimate reflection of what we want to show others about ourselves, and this album is my own spin on that concept—a journey into my inner life through this collage of meaningful music, in my own voice as a composer and a jazz musician. It’s an album inspired by the songs and media that expressed how I felt in my younger years, but it is not a replication of that media. It’s a series of diary entries, a statement about identity and culture, and an exploration of genre and style.”
Marty Isenberg
Track Listing:
1. Stephanie Says 06:40
2. The Way I Feel Inside 09:31
3. Life On Mars 07:57
4. Needle In The Hay 08:47
5. Rebel Rebel 04:38
6. So Long 04:38
7. Cello Song 08:02
8. These Days 05:14
Personnel:
Sami Stevens: vocals
Ramsay Rawson: vocals
Marty Isenberg: bass
Rodrigo Recabarren: drums
Marta Sanchez: piano
Nir Felder: guitar
Ric Beeker: trombone (1,3,5,6,8)
Sami Stevens: vocals (2,4,5,7,8)
Alicyn Yaffee: guitar (1,5,6,8)
Sean Nowell: saxophone/flute (1,5,8)
Jay Rattman: clarinet (1,6)
Rich Perry: saxophone (2,3)
Dallas Heaton: harpsichord (1)
Nate Ostermiller: mandolin (1)
Kyra Sims: french horn (2)
Trevor New: violin (2)
Pablo Masis: trumpet (1)
Sasha Berliner: vibraphone (5)
Ramsay Rawson: vocals (5)
Dennis Bulhoes: percussion (5)
Gil Defay: trumpet (6)
Recorded September 15th, 2022 & October 18th, 2022 at Bunker Studios
Engineered and mixed by Nolan Thies
Mastered by Phil Feinman/Infrasonic Mastering
Produced by Marty Isenberg
Art by Renan Campus
Review:
Movies are things you listen to as much as you watch. Not just the dialogue (which is pretty important), but the whole sound design and, crucially, the music. Bassist Marty Isenberg is a big fan of director Wes Anderson’s mixtape cinematography and The Way I Feel Inside is his own movie collage, aiming at and heartbreakingly achieving the same poignancy of loneliness, wonder, alienation that Anderson evokes. The title song is a perfect illustration. The original Zombies number is a virtually unaccompanied vocal, turned here into a delicate orchestral piece and sung with perfect weight and a devastating key change by Sami Stevens. Sometimes, the renditions are fairly literal, like David Bowie’s “Life On Mars?,” which Anderson also used, sung in Portuguese, in The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou, but with the melody delivered by Ric Becker and Nir Felder. But who could tell what was coming after the percussion intro to “Cello Song”? Nick Drake is an Anderson favourite, and both Anderson and Isenberg know how to retain and ramp up the original mood and emotion. Musically, it’s a cleverly devised ensemble, each arrangement pitch perfect. “Imaginary soundtracks” and “movies for your ears” are also somewhat clichéd, but Isenberg has gone way beyond that. This is a movie.
Brian Morton (DownBeat)
