The Tragic Treasury: Songs From a Series of Unfortunate Events
Children's discs, like cartoons, sometimes work on a couple of different levels, but those levels are usually predictable--the pop-culture reference that flies over a slack-jawed fourth grader's head while garnering a chuckle from her parent, for example, or the double-entendre that's decidedly singular in the eyes of a 6-year-old child.The Tragic Treasury, the companion disc to Daniel Handler's creepily addictive Lemony Snicket series of books, is in a whole different league: 11-year-olds and the adults who hover over them, waiting for their own chance to devour each title, will love its verisimilitude--songs like "Scream and Run Away" and "Smile! No One Cares How You Feel" couldn't have been concocted for anything else--and indie-rock types, be they 19 or 62, will love its drearily exceptional hipness. Whether you know your grim grottos from your vile villages and hostile hospitals (all Snicket titles) couldn't matter less: if artful gloom-leaning pop grabs you, this disc gives up the goods, and of a quality you won't find anywhere else besides a handful of less-inspired Gothic Archies releases. As most non-Snicketeers inclined to pick upThe Tragic Treasuryknow, Stephen Merritt--he of the equally excellent Magnetic Fields--is responsible; a few accordion contributions from Handler himself aside, he alone is the merry Goth man. He also writes a mean lyric, and luckily for Snicket loyalists, they're included in liner notes here.--Tammy La Gorce