Saul Zonana is a scruffy young dude with the shaggy coiffure and ubiquitous sweatsuit befitting the guy who stands behind the counter at a vintage store and offers you six bucks (or store credit) for all the clothes your ex-girlfriend left in your car.
What’s important, however, isn’t how Zonana looks, but how he sounds, his being a musician and all. And, after having taken in “42 Days,” his fourth solo CD, a number of names come to mind: The Beatles, Beck, Depeche Mode, Foo Fighters, Neil Young and Weezer, to name a few. In short, nobody bad.
Perhaps the two most apropos soundalikes of Zonana’s are the first two on that list: the Beatles and Beck. Like the quasi-Jewish Beck, Zonana — the Queens-born son of a Spanish father and Jewish mom from Brooklyn — has that raggedy, jack-of-all-trades, kickaround musician vibe. Zonana, however isn’t nearly as eclectic, unconventional, jarring, weird or, frankly, talented as Beck (that’s not necessarily a knock; Willie McCovey wasn’t as talented as Willie Mays, after all). His voice is actually a lot better, but, oddly enough, less endearing than Beck’s nasal monotone.
And, as far as The Fab Four, one hardly needs to consult the liner notes to discern that the young Zonana grew up listening to his older brother’s Beatles records. The Fabs’ influence peeks through like sun on a cloudy day via Zonana’s selective use of strings, descending chords, harmonies and razor-sharp, Lennon-like vocals.
Overall, “42 Days” is a pretty damn solid effort. And while some of the 11 tunes go in one ear and out the other, a healthy number pass the “Damn, I’d like to listen to that one again right now!” test. These are, in fact, the very songs denoted as “standouts” by Zonana’s apparently lucid and right-on PR flaks.
And the standout of these standouts is, undoubtedly, “Hey Now,” the album’s fifth track. A series of spoken-word vignettes a la Cake’s “Going the Distance” or King Missile’s “Detachable Penis” connected by a jarring melee of guitars right out of “Keep on Rockin’ in the Free World,” with a touch of soft melodies and vocals not unlike those on Beck’s “Mutations” album, this is just the kind of hard-hitting number that Live 105 ought to play three times an hour.
Other tunes also showcase Zonana’s considerable skill, as he mixes his Beatlesque harmonies and Weezer-like hard guitars to satisfying effect. But not everything here comes out well. A musical autodidact, Zonana is often playing most if not all of the instruments on any given track, and sometimes he plays one noticeably better than another. On at least two tracks, complex, interwoven backgrounds and harmonies are ruined by Casio drum machine-like percussion or clunky pawnshop synthesizers.
Zonana attempts a soft, sweet ballad, but his ungentle voice is just not suited to it. And the album’s seventh track, “Every Now and Then” is shockingly cheesy; it really does sound like the kind of mindless poppy number playing before the 9:40 showing of a teenage comedy while Coca-Cola adverts and word jumbles are projected onto the movie screen (“What ‘Pulp Fiction’ star is this? M-U-A H-T-R-U-M-N-A…UMA THURMAN!”).
Anyhow, perfect this album is not, but it’s evident even at first listening (and more so after two, three or four goes) that Saul Zonana’s got soul, baby. The man’s a clever musician and, dollars to doughnuts, a kick-ass live performer.
But as for the reasoning behind the album’s title — who knows? Maybe Zonana is a “Hitchikers’ Guide to the Galaxy” fan?
“42 Days” by Saul Zonana (20/20 Music, $12.97). For more information, see www.saulzonana.com.