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<'The Tallyman’s Dark Omnibus- ‘… no longer so lonely.’ - A Review

'If cities were sapient they would be psychotic. Every second they are different, yet they remain oppressively the same. They are larger than us, yet they are made up of us. Made up of millions of cells/parasites trying to survive and trying to tell their own story every day.

The Tallyman's dark OMNIBUS is one man, Tal E. Shaanti. Hailing from Britain's "Black Country" he exudes a gritty personality on the CD "... no longer so lonely". The pollution of the air seems to have worked it's way into his heart. Not that's he's happy about it, on this recording he seems desperate to sing out light. He's hunting for hope in grim urban landscapes and in himself.

An omnibus is a collection of things or a form of mass transportation. Understanding this album (also meaning a collection of things) is like trying to understand a complete story by only reading fragments of chapters. Or better yet, like trying to see a whole movie based on scenes that you see as you fly by them on a bus. This recording is like a guided tour of mundane madness and petty evil with a guide who keeps nodding off. The end result is fragmented: there's a circus flourish to start, indictment of middle class callousness here, a ghost story there, synthesizers roll on one song, accordion on another. Fragmented yet intriguing. You know that there's a dead girl at the heart of this, but she is one girl or many? What's more important one dead person or all the indifference to death they represent?

Shaanti doesn't have vocal strength of Nick Cave or the epic quality of Bertolt Brecht but he comes from the same purgatorial side of life as they do. Stories come easy in this twilight realm, how could you see what they've seen and not want to tell? Tal is at his best when he tells more than sings. "... no longer so lonely" is best when it feels like a soundtrack to a intimate play. On it's best moments this CD flirts with us trying to get us to sit and experience the entire show. But it's just a come on. Like trying to get to know someone who's drunk at a bar. You'll never get the full story only bits and drams, you'll get those pieces of their life either carefully filtered or impossible to restrain.

"... no longer so lonely" is like that, incomplete but better for it. You'll come back to try and decipher the whole story. To try and see the whole movie in one opening of your eyes, to try and watch the play when all of the action happens at once. Like a city, you could live here for years and not understand all of it but still it all feels familiar. Like the city, this is a landscape where children should not walk around by themselves.

This is Tal E. Shaanti's story and only he could tell quite like this.'

Sepiachord Magazine (USA) Review January 10th, 2008

http://www.sepiachord.com/tally.htm