To read through Karen Mantler's hilarious biography on XTRA Watt's website, her life from the very beginning has been...unusual. Conceived by Carla Bley and Michael Mantler at the 1965 Newport Jazz Festival, as an infant she was placed under her mother's piano while she performed, and made her recording debut at the age of four on Escalator Over the Hill. Mantler has worked as a bandleader, live, and session player (with Robert Wyatt, Motohiko Hino, and the Golden Palominos, no less), musical transcriber, label boss, street musician, and coffee server. As a leader her four previous records comprised an 11-year cycle that revolved around her pet cat, his death, and her search for a replacement that began in 1989 with My Cat Arnold and ended with Karen Mantler's Pet Project in 2000, all of which melded progressive jazz and sophisticated avant-pop. Despite its title and the smallest lineup she has ever fronted (she's singing and playing piano and harmonica, accompanied by bassist Kato Hideki and Doug Wieselman on bass clarinet and guitar). Business Is Bad may be the record that reaches the largest audience. These songs are no less idiosyncratic or musically refined, but sparser arrangements and warm, spacious production frame her lyrics and melodies in such a way as to render them more accessible. The focus here is on the direct interplay between lyric and melody, yet her wry humor and honesty remain ever present. "Catch as Catch Can" opens on a deep bluesy note as it address the plight of the homeless and hungry, living in parks and eating when and what they can. Her delivery is dispassionate, thus making the lyric more poignant: "There are hungry people in the park, and they need to eat...There are too many geese anyway/You could eat one every day..What the fuck?/ Catch a duck/Spear a fish on a stick...What's the big deal?"

1		Catch As Catch Can
2		My Magic Pencil (Wrote This Melody)
3		Speak French
4		Wintertime
5		Surviving You
6		Business Is Bad
7		I Can't Afford My Lawyer
8		My Solo
9		That Damn Volcano

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