Album Review: Joe Iconis & Family Release a Hyper-Generous, Uber-Artistic, Super-Sensational ALBUM | Broadway World | By Stephen Mosher
There are two tells right on the cover of the new CD release by Joe Iconis titled ALBUM that will let the listener know precisely what they will get when they press the 'play' button on their device, and a third tell that appears, like an Easter Egg, in the credits. The first two are the title and the cover art, and the third is an icon and a word that almost always appear after the name Joe Iconis.
Tell number one: An Album, as Mr. Iconis details in his opening track, is more than just a collection of recorded songs released for the listening enjoyment of an audience. And a Google search on the definition of the word album first describes a blank book for the purpose of storing photographs, stamps, and pictures. To that end, what Joe Iconis has created is both an album of music, and an album of photographs - photographs that come to life, one after another, jumping off of the page, as though in some mystical movie where still life art begins to move and create a story before our very eyes. Each one of the forty-four songs on the three and one-half hour CD is a photograph, capturing a moment in time, a story, a slice of a person's life, and each of these tales springs forth from the mind of Mr. Iconis in ways wonderful, whimsical, and even a little bit wicked. It's a gallery of gorgeous glories, captured for all-time, for repeated observation.
The second tell on the album cover is the fact that the face of Joe Iconis is completely obliterated by the word ALBUM, which is superimposed over a fogged over photo of the musical storyteller. That's Joe Iconis. He writes the songs and he gives them over to the artists to tell the stories, allowing himself to become the blank page upon which the story is being written. He becomes a faceless entity, fading into the background, working in service of the telling of the tale, and the tellers of the tales.
Which brings us to the third tell: & Family. An icon and a word. This icon and this word frequently appear after the name Joe Iconis. Oftentimes Mr. Iconis will perform in concert as JOE ICONIS & FAMILY - indeed they have just finished a sold-out run of shows at 54 Below. Mr. Iconis is the patriarchal figure in a collective of New York City artists that act as his inspiration and his conduits, with him creating works of musical storytelling for them, which they, then, deliver unto the public. The mission statement of the man that is Joe Iconis appears to be one that will support and promote the artistry of the family of artists that he calls his own. It's a special way to live, and while it is a foregone conclusion that there are other (as the saying goes) "Logical Families" like this all over the world, when it happens in New York City, among a group of Manhattanites, there is a vibe about it that is uniquely NYC. All of that is captured on ALBUM.