America’s Favorite Marches

It’s all John Phillip Sousa, performed by an anonymous marching band, released by a Quebecois label. The packaging is even less inspired and even more penny-pinched than the last CD. The very first thing I hear on the very first track is a tuba veering painfully sharp. It is soon joined by a cacophony of saxophones, trumpets, and horns exploring the limits of such concepts as tuning stability and staying in tempo.

There’s no band credited, so I have no idea who to blame for this record. It sounds like someone recorded a local high school marching band practice. I am biased against any genre where the bass goes “oom” and then “pah”, whether that be Polka, Norteño, or Ragtime, so this was never going to rank highly. But if they recorded it with competent musicians and placed the mics a little better, I might have at least understood the appeal. As it is, the only joy I got out of this record is recognizing the march that Monty Python used for their theme song.

America’s Favorite Marches is a bad album, and I don’t like it.