Review: George Anthony - Murder & Mayhem

The title of George Antho­ny’s debut album, Mur­der & May­hem, sig­nals the dan­ger­ous top­ics that Antho­ny cov­ers in an impres­sive­ly-tight 33 minute album. Man­ag­ing this in just over half an hour seemed to me an absurd thought, because I’ve seen George deliv­er the open­ing track, ​“The Man, The Rab­bit and the Tur­tle”, in per­son and it took near­ly 30 min­utes for him to tell this joke about his dad deliv­er­ing a joke.

Sev­er­al tracks on this album are abbre­vi­at­ed ver­sions of jokes that Antho­ny has told in longer form. I don’t envy the edit­ing required to make this album. As a sto­ry­teller that is a mas­ter at cre­at­ing visu­als — every­thing from the painful­ly detailed descrip­tion of a pet shop, to the fam­i­ly fight at the movie the­ater, to the unfor­tu­nate inci­dent at CVS, you can eas­i­ly visu­al­ize what Antho­ny is describ­ing. And I don’t know how he does it, but he gets an audi­ence to laugh at things that deliv­ered by any oth­er per­son would elic­it crick­ets. From the open­ing track, Antho­ny gets an audi­ence to roar at this fair­ly mun­dane line: “…we don’t take checks here”. It does­n’t mat­ter how or why, it just mat­ters that Antho­ny makes us laugh at the mundane. 

Dur­ing the course of the album, Antho­ny cer­tain­ly cov­ers both mur­der and may­hem. I don’t want to reveal too much about the par­ties involved in the murder(s) and mayhem(s) because it would steal your joy of lis­ten­ing to Antho­ny slow­ly reveal the intri­cate and incred­i­bly intel­li­gent ways in which he’s able to weave a sto­ry. The way he sets up the track ​“Here’s My Chance” is one I’ll point to because I know I was­n’t expect­ing a polit­i­cal com­men­tary, but as I reflect­ed on it, I cer­tain­ly thought about how our soci­ety sees race. The oth­er time in the album he delves into pol­i­tics, he does­n’t get super polit­i­cal; he lays out his obser­va­tion and lets you decide how to take it.

If you’ve seen him live, you know that he does­n’t move a lot, he does­n’t emote a lot (take note of the excep­tion on ​“This Sun­day”), but is always ful­ly in con­trol of the deliv­ery and tim­ing of his words. Antho­ny is a mas­ter at both. That is on full dis­play on this album. When all you have is audio, deliv­ery and tim­ing have to be per­fect. The only flaw I can find in this album is I wish I could have more, and I wish I could return to Austin com­e­dy venues to watch him per­form. Hav­ing this album to turn to will have to do. It cer­tain­ly will do just fine. Despite the promise of mur­der and may­hem.

The album release date is May 22, 2020; grab your copy now and sup­port George!

Get it at FMCW Stu­dios, https://​www​.georgean​tho​ny​com​e​dy​.com or on iTunes/​Apple Music (search for George Anthony).