‘Gee Whiz’ Nellie McKay’s Demos Are Outstanding

Twenty-one years ago, the 21-year-old Nellie McKay released her debut album Get Away From Me to much critical acclaim. Reviewers from the New York Times to Pitchfork and PopMatters praised its eclectic mix of musical styles from Tin Pan Alley to hip-hop, cabaret jazz to spoken word, blues to Broadway, singer-songwriter to rock, and its unclassifiable singularity.

McKay was compared to everyone from Doris Day to Frank Zappa, Eminem to Green Day, and Tom Waits to Randy Newman. While the album made Billboard‘s Top 200 chart and McKay appeared on network television shows, it was never a big financial success. At the same time, McKay squabbled over creative differences with her record company and was soon dropped by her label.

Geoff Emerick, famous for his work on the Beatles‘ Revolver, Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band and Abbey Road albums produced and engineered McKay’s introductory release. He incorporated the addition of more than 20 guest musicians, including five violinists, a cellist, a trombonist, a flautist, a harpist, an accordionist, a rap consultant, a rhythm consultant, and three assistant engineers. McKay played chimes, glockenspiel, organ, percussion, piano, recorder, vibraphone, synthesizer, and xylophone on the album. The music was sonically rich, full of layered textures and sounds. McKay’s vocals stood out positively as she mastered various genres with confidence and panache.

McKay still writes, performs, and records wonderful music, but her initial comet-like entry into the music business has faded. In an age when female stars in their 20s (Chappell Roan, Sabrina Carpenter, Olivia Rodrigo, Billie Eilish, Lucy Dacus) who owe a debt to McKay’s pioneering efforts are among the most successful artists, the 43-year-old McKay seems out of fashion. Her music has not changed as much as the world has. As George Melly famously noted about rock music, what begins as rebellion turns into style. What was once iconoclastic is the new tradition, as evidenced by the triumphs of Roan, Carpenter, and others.

Omnivore Records has recently released Gee Whiz: The Get Away From Me Demos. Nellie McKay produced the record and plays all the instruments (except drums on three of the 21 tracks that are presented in the same order as the original record, with three bonus tracks tacked on the end. Not to disparage Emerick, but McKay’s musical excursions take more risks. She’s not afraid to be more personal in her criticisms of public apathy and the toleration of sexism and racism in the social arena. Emerick gilded her barbed humor into artifice. Her sarcasm comes off as a joke, which it is, but the joke can often be on the unwary listener.

There’s footage on YouTube of McKay on television’s The View singing “I Wanna Get Married” to a confused set of hosts. McKay’s youth and bubbly personality confuse them. Don’t worry. You are young and pretty. There’s plenty of time left for you to find a husband, they reassure her. They don’t realize she’s kidding. She finds the thought of settling into domesticity with a working husband and raising kids as a fiendish fate. Emerick’s production of Get Away From Me frames the material in ways that suggest McKay is all surface. Like the hosts of The View, Emerick confuses the sincerity of her performance with what she is artistically presenting.

“What does it matter if I change the world at all?” McKay asks, referring to Ethel Merman and Frank Sinatra. Can music actually cause social/political change? She wants to know. Laughing at her suggests the answer is “no”, but just by asking the question, she presumes it could be “yes”. While some of the songs’ references may seem passé (President George W. Bush, war in Bosnia, starvation in Bosnia), the topics still resonate today.

Besides world peace, McKay addresses everything from foreign affairs to male/female relationships to the joy of pets with a serious, if playful, eye. Her more stripped-down production on the demos makes her musings personal and gives them weight. As demos, they’re more coarse than Emerick’s finished project, which makes her concerns more direct and authentic.

Gee Whiz reveals Nellie McKay’s instrumental talents, vocal charms, and intellectual capabilities without added sweetening. The music is bright enough on its own. Songs such as “Respectable”, “Toto Dies”, and “Ding Dong” would be more insidious without Emerick’s production talents. The release of these original demos, like the Beatles’ anthology albums and other demo records released after the success of finished projects, shows the hard work that went into the creation of what seemed to be magical masterpieces.

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