Lonesome Organist

An audio disc seems a pretty dodgy medium to showcase the dexterity of a man who sings while playing drums, guitar, harmonica and keys simultaneously, but you’ve got to appreciate the Lonesome Organist for maintaining his one-man band approach on Forms and Follies. Like his carnie-act live performances, Jeremy Jacobson multi-tasks his way through a gamut of sonic aesthetics from pretty keyboard ditties to cross-eyed barmy solitary rock-outs. "The Robot Fugue” and "Postlude to a Happy Ending” keep things beautifully basic, in the sense that Jacobson only juggles about three instruments at once, while the oddball, doo-wop irony of "One of Me” stretches the limit of what one man can play with every available appendage. He’s strutting his bag o’ tricks through Toronto and Montreal in mid-July; I’ll be there simply for the freak factor.