Clarinetist Seth Kibel was content to continue playing klezmer and jazz—until election night last November. Appalled like the majority of Americans, he found himself penning songs with lyrics that bounce between anger, sadness and snark. Kibel gathered a gaggle of musicians and vocalists to record tunes in a variety of musical modes. “Stalin’s Revenge” harkens to his klezmer roots in a sardonic take on Russian hacking. The snappy pop “Unfriend” proclaims “there’s no rest for the stupid” on the worldwide web while the rousing R&B of “240 Years” recounts the bad deeds of U.S. presidents from Jefferson onward but concludes that even the worst of the lot had nothing on Trump. Kibel and crew may be singing to the choir, but in these times we all need some musical inspiration.
