The Flypaper Orchestra
Boulevard of Broken Dreams (Flypaper)

If you’ve got an ounce of nostalgia in your soul, run right out and buy yourself this for Christmas.

Long-time Georgia Straight contributor and under-the-radar guitarist Ken Eisner has assembled an astonishing cast of musicians both famous and unknown, local and international, on Boulevard of Broken Dreams, which he’s all-too-presciently subtitled Old Songs for a New Depression.

He’s also pushed them into some surprising partnerships: Salt Spring Island slide wizard Harry Manx with gospel group the Sojourners makes sense, but mustachioed theremin explorer Stephen Hamm with former Miles Davis guitarist Robben Ford and local blues god Jim Byrnes? On the appropriately eerie “Fear Itself”, that makes sense too.

Eisner also dispels the notion that music critics can’t play through his sparkling, intimate guitar duets with fret kings Michael Friedman and Paul Pigat, in the process setting the bar regrettably high for any other ink-stained pickers in this town who might be considering their own recording.

Damn him! But I digress. The bandleader does a fabulous job of updating classics like the title tune and Woody Guthrie’s “I Ain’t Got No Home in This World Anymore”, nudging them towards Tom Waits terrain in part through the state-of-the-art stickwork of drummers Dan Parry and Geoff Hicks.

Bassist Rene Worst, violinist Jesse Zubot, and keyboardist Simon Kendall also make memorable contributions, alongside an A-list cast of singers, including Ron Sexsmith, Colleen Rennison, and Luke Doucet.

The downside of all this, I suppose, is that if you’re not of a nostalgic bent Boulevard of Broken Dreams might seem impressive, but slightly less than necessary. Eisner needn’t worry, however: four years from now we’re all going to be nostalgic for now.