Press & Reviews

Flipside
March/April 1997
BLOCK
"Lead Me Not Into Penn Station" CD

I think it would be unfair to this guy to compare him to that Whippersnapper youngin‚ upstart Beck, though that‚s what first comes to mind, you know, that street minstrel stuff cut over a snappy drum beat. It‚d be more fair to call him a nineties folksy that has a reverence for New York that is reminiscent of Lou Reed crossed with that Bob-n-Woody thang.

This is a mix media thing. The CD compatible with computers, and generally shows Block jammin‚ in the street and hanging out. You gotta take the subway to get there, it‚s safer on the computer than it is in real life, but hey, that‚s virtual reality for yaS Lotsa great lyrics, which unfortunately, aren‚t printed on the booklet, but lines like "Hell, you can even get laid on the telephone and avoid the rash" are clever and witty and utterly irresistible to this lunkhead, and the fact that the missus asks me to turn it off, not up, makes me like it all the more. The whole thing runs hot and cold, from boppin‚ to really acoustic driven mellow ballads, but I like it, I mean it‚s hard to find a hook good enough to make a chorus like the word "Rhinoceros" work, but this guy does it somehow.