The Creaking Planks
Flogged Round the Fleet (Independent)

Attendees of early Creaking Planks shows—say, at the first Vancouver Zombiewalk after-party, where Rowan “Blackbox Squeezebeard” Lipkovits (accordion) and Lee Shoal (ukulele, kazoo) did somewhat halting covers of songs like the Kingston Trio’s “Zombie Jamboree”—could be forgiven for thinking the band a joke. A funny joke, and certainly an in-joke, but not a group you might turn to for the pleasures of polished musicianship, even of the jug-band variety.

Well, here’s a surprise: as if to illustrate the truth of the saying that a fool who persists in his folly shall become wise, the Planks have benefited from playing innumerable shows locally and throughout the Pacific Northwest. While still richly swathed in irony, the traditionals on this CD (European and/or Yiddish folkie fare like “Tanz Tanz Yidelekh” and “Moscow Nights” and the absurdly deadpan covers—including a new recording of Lipkovits’s delightful arrangement of the Minimalist Jug Band’s “Dead Man’s Pants”—are, in fact, quite beautifully conceived and credibly played.