Gargoyle Wings

reviewed by Carey Dean Potash

Published September 1st, 1998

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Gargoyle Wings is sensational. Gargoyle Wings redefines music. The future of music depends on albums like Gargoyle Wings.

This is how I would describe Gargoyle Wings if I had stabbed a crack needle into my frontal lobe.

My first guess was that this was a 16-year-old kid who just finished listening to an audio cassette of “Learn the Guitar in One Week,” and figured it was time to break out the shiny new 4-track his parents bought him for Christmas and cut a CD to be distributed throughout his high school with the aspirations of becoming a macabre, oddly attractive cult figure.

Then I thought no, it was a 47-year-old jaded ex-librarian on disability who thought it would be a “hoot” to dig out the old ukulele he hadn’t played in 20 years and voice his frustrations to a new generation using a language they can understand. He went to the big city to a real studio while his knitting wife pulled away from her pot holders to applaud hysterically after each song.

Then I thought, “come on, be serious.” So I listened intensely to Gargoyle Wings for two solid minutes, realizing that it wasn’t a wannabe goth teen nor a middle-aged ex-librarian turning on his wife with his “wild side.” It was Rowlf, the piano-playing canine muppet from the Muppet Show. Once I discovered this, everything fell perfectly into place. It had to be Rowlf. This was his comeback record. Incognito as Bob Xark.

• It sounded a lot like him.
  
• He has music in his blood.
  
• Who other than a minor muppet whose career ended prematurely when his creator died would be bitter enough to write songs like “Denying People Medicine” and “Oozing Rot?”

Then I thought, what the hell am I doing? With the two minutes I spent listening to Gargoyle Wings, I could have been outside, scraping the bird crap off my car windshield.