Album Review: The Venetia Fair - The Circus

This is possibly the hardest review I have ever done and its not because the music is bad or the band hasn’t provided enough information about themselves, but because The Venetia Fair are; for want of better words: Fuckin mental.

Let me try and paint the picture of this album, titled ‘The Circus’, The Venetia Fair take you on a schizophrenic journey that you will never forget! The debut album by 5 guys from Boston is basically split into 2 parts. The first 4 songs on the album are labelled as ‘the overture’, with the following songs making up the second part of the album which is known as ‘the circus’ confused yet?

So the Venetia Fair mix every type of music that you can imagine, they are an eclectic mix of pop, punk, hardcore, emo, jazz, musical, in fact I may as well list every genre every imagined. Try taking Bert McCracken from The Used, all the guys from Piece the Veil and Envy on the Coast, System of a Down, a horn section, a circus act or two, Jools Holland and ALOT of acid and throwing them all into a mixer and whatever got spat out might come somewhere close!!

So onto the music, we start with ‘the overture’ part of the album…as mentioned before these are the first 4 songs on the album, these are possibly the more straight forward songs on the album. Here the band immediately showcase their fantastic writing qualities. With crazy breakdowns and jagged time changes. All held together by singer Benny Santoro literally spitting out his emotionally charged and brutally honest lyrics over the top of all the chaos. Everything moves so quickly you hardly have time to catch your breath, each song picking up where the last has left off, bouncing along the pace rarely slows.

Before you know it you have entered ‘the circus’ and you are welcomed by the song ‘The Ringleader (Nonus the Hobo)’…you are immediately thrown into a dark, almost terrifying world with this ringleader trying to draw you in to visit his seemingly messed up world. The music continues in its insane manner with singer Benny taking on each character as we go on our journey. We get horns, we get massive piano breakdowns and epic instrumentals.

As the album unfolds we visit various characters (Decimus the Tramp, Mortus the Bum) and various parts of the circus…each with its own different story, each with its own emotionally charged tale and darkness, often disturbing on all kinds of level.

I’d like to explain more about each song but there is just too much to get my head around, there is so much going on this is truly intense music If my review so far has left you scratching your head, then I’ve portrayed this album perfectly, because that is exactly how it makes you feel.

Despite all the insane subplots and bizarre concepts, ‘The Circus’ is an outstanding debut effort from The Venetia Fair. The problem I think they will have is a lot of people will read what this album is about and probably dismiss it immediately. I know for a fact that I didn’t like the sound of it but let the music do the talking, as these songs are some of the best I’ve heard in a while. I think the only real criticism is that they should have maybe released the 2 parts of the album separately, maybe 2 EPs would have been better suited.

If I’m brutally honest I think to review this album properly, you’d need to listen to it near on 20 times, purely because there is so much going on. I won’t be putting this album away any time soon so maybe in 6 months time I might be able to write a more in depth detailed account of what exactly goes on during these 47 odd minutes!...until then I suggest you grab this for yourself and enjoy the ride…

4/5

'The Circus' by The Venetia Fair is available now on Red Blue Records.

The Venetia Fair on MySpace

Matt Buck