SLUKA, Cautionary Yell

It’s perfect that singer, songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Christopher Sluka launches his latest Sluka album Cautionary Yell with the funky and hypnotic, sonically dense and intense tune “When the Genie’s Out." Because though this is his 14th release in a career that goes back a quarter century, it’s possible some folks who should have been aware of his quirky innovative musical energy, they’re now just getting wind. He kinda explains it in the snappy opening lines of his bio – he’s big in Japan. And then Europe.

The term Renaissance Man is kinda cliché but it also fits. Beyond his musical impact, which includes being owner of his indie label, he’s owned several coffee shops in San Diego (which he used as showcase places to try out his music) and then opened a flight school and learned to fly. He and his fellow pilot, bass player Anna Eppink drove the thunder on Ready to Connect (2019) and blaze the trail again here with a fiery new waensemble and the ever-poppin’ production of Grammy winning producer Alan Sanderson, who’s worked his sonic magic for legends like the Rolling Stones, Elton John and Fleetwood Mac and for later icons who emerged in the 90s like Weezer, Fiona Apple and Elliot Smith.

Sanderson knows a hipster “Sunset Screamer” when he hears one and helps Sluka fuse his established modern prog rock vibe with a new wave intensity on the album’s second lead single. The song chosen for the third, the raucous power ballad “Saving It All,” powerfully tests the harmonic limits of Sluka’s voice and is clearly the emotional centerpiece.

Before hitting that crescendo, Sluka eases into easy swinging jazz/pop territory for one of the Cautionary Yell’s most infectious and vocally charming tracks “My Own Reasons” and draws on a flying metaphor for “Wave Goodbye and Fly Away,” soaring with breathtaking orchestral grandeur with punchy strings and the gorgeous cello of Erdis Maxhelaku. Thematically, Sluka captures our socio-political zeitgeist perfectly with the album title and its array of tunes by, as he says, “desperately trying to be optimistic in the face of impending doom.”

The album title itself is about hoping to remain calm while facing the horrors of the world. In the midst of all the coolness and (still melodically compelling) chaos, the singer offers the bold assurance that “I Am…Okay,” a tune whose chords may remind some of Alice Cooper’s “Only Women Bleed” and serves to inspire us listeners to realize that the world is a tough place, where loss is certain (“Gone Our Treasures”) but we can always seek and find solace in the things that are sacred to us.