Record Reviews

Legendary Crystal Chandelier

Beyond Indifference (Quality Park)

Peter Schmidt has lived several musical lifetimes over 15-plus years in Dallas' musical microverse. His mid-Eighties act Three on a Hill predated even the New Bohemians as the Deep Ellum scene's "Next Big Thing." In the Nineties, it was the Schmidt-fronted Funland knocking on success' door. Now, Schmidt is the Legendary Crystal Chandelier, and when he says, "I ain't got nothin' to prove to anyone," he means it. With Beyond Indifference, Schmidt (who also plays with ex-Bedhead members in the New Year) has made an album for nobody but himself, and that's a very good thing. "Cut From the Same Cloth" opens this second LCC album with an atmospheric Western motif, a shadowy outlaw mystique that Schmidt quickly blows to smithereens with the aforementioned "People I Know" -- a page straight out of the Funland book of infectious power-stomp rock. "Can't believe a word that I've been sold," he says as his primal rock & roll spirit bubbles to the surface. Mostly, though, Schmidt's pleasant side emerges. The oh-so-Seventies-rock "A Plan" reminds fans of the wonders Funland once worked with Air Supply. The title track distills even more of what makes us smile when we remember 8-tracks and Seventies radio rock, and none of what makes us groan. Schmidt's lyrics are loaded with post-irony (as in, irony has gotten old) in songs like "Everybody Is Happy" and "Temporary Words." He even cranks up the synths lurking in the background on "1933," a bit of electro-pop pleasure. The LCC's eclectic, all right, but Peter Schmidt is still rock & roll all over.