A Game of Cards
Review by Johnny Angel, New Times Los Angeles, 7/12/01

The Wild Acoustic Chamber Orchestra - W.A.C.O. for short - are not pop musicians. They are not accessible, they are not marketable and they have none of the earmarks of a typical Los Angeles ensemble. They aren't seeking representation or major label affiliation. They aren't washing-the-dishes background music, make-out music or cruising-down-the-freeway music. They are a challenge to absorb and they demand attention from listeners in a time when anything above somnambulant ambience is regarded as a threat to national security.

With jarring string swoops and dissonant trills over a quasi-jazz rhythm section and the voice of Steven Gregoropoulos crooning and declaiming atop it all, W.A.C.O. can either be a thrilling roller-coaster ride or a hideous train wreck, depending on the quality of their individual tracks - there is no in-between here. This fourth disc of theirs, unlike their previous effort, Sylvania, is a nonconcept collection of compositions and ruminations untied by a common theme. While it's less stirring and engaging than that recording on the whole, A Game of Cards has higher highs, especially the lovely "Forming" and "Elvis Evangeline," as well as the epic "Hydra." The latter track is highly reminiscent of Neil Young's "Expecting to Fly" and "Broken Arrow" and evidences the powerful influence of Young's arranger, the late Jack Nietzche, to whom A Game of Cards is dedicated.

The misses, oddly enough, occur when Gregoropoulos oversteps himself, aiming for the kind of complex and unnecessary tempo shifts that have been the curse of "progressive" music since musicians realized that counting out 13/4 or 19/8 was a clever idea. But the band have improved enough to at least negotiate the hard time signatures; kudos to propelling force Pablo Garcia, the bassist, for this step ahead. That said, it's more proof than is needed to make the case that this disc isn't standand fare. Offbeat beat often feel affected in rock bands like Rush, and the same law applies here. An outside arranger or producer would be a welcome addition.

They ain't *NSync or Mandy Moore or Destiny's Child, they ain't Limp Bizkit or Dave Matthews, and they ain't even Magnetic Fields or the Ass Ponys. W.A.C.O. stand alone. Whether or not you commit to swimming in the music as it plays is your choice, but the Wild Acoustic Chamber Orchestra cannot - or will not - be ignored. We're better off for it, completely.

A Game of Cards
Fred Mills, Magnet Magazine

...the band fiddling around with its Tom Waits-meets-Raymond Scott chamber-pop sound until the bubble "pops" - the sonic equivalent of a cartoon character's head exploding, only to be miraculously reassembled by the next frame.

Sylvania
Review by Johnny Angel, San Francisco Bay Guardian, 1999

If you'd told me that in 1999, someone would make an orchestral rock disc that rivaled Forever Changes or Pleasures of the Harbor, I'd have had you committed. WACO, the brainchild of Steven Gregoropoulos, has created a song-cycle of 16 numbers that add up to an amazing semi-modernist, semi-baroque document without stinking of condescending prog bullshit, or of faux ambient twaddle. Conceptually based around the lives and existential gloom of the ladies and gents in Steven G's Silverlake art-scene, this is the first time since Beck's Odelay that someone from LA has captured the sounds of the city. Recommended to those who may hate Los Angeles but love Pet Sounds, say.

Like Neil Young, W.A.C.O. singer/pianist Steve Gregoropoulos has a soft spot in his heart for reviled Republican presidents, finding it poignant that Richard Nixon muttered to paintings during his last days in the Oval Office. Given Steve's reputation as Silver Lake's most notorious, although friendly, curmudgeon, it's not entirely surprising when he claims that "Andy," a ballad from W.A.C.O.'s new debut CD, is "a homosexual love song about Andrew Johnson." 

Of course, when it comes to Gregoropoulos' internal universe, strict interpretation isn't the point. "'Take a Gun to the Movies' is specifically about them having weapons checks at New Jack City," he says over hot chocolate at a tropical Silver Lake cafe. "There was all this watchdog bullshit going around, a combination of hype - selling the movie - and repression." Yet the tune unfolds brightly, with jaunty string-section strokes and flute chirps layered over sinister phrases like "There's a sinkhole in the evening" and "Mr. Sweetie has got an iron lung." 

Half the fun of deciphering Steve's thickly veiled, knotty lyrics is guessing which scenester or historical figure the song is "about," and even then the story is rarely literal, as in the Eva-Peron-goes-to-China fantasy "The Long March," which Steve recently rewrote, a la Elton, as a "tribute" to Princess Di. Still, it's a puzzle why Gregoropoulos, who hates any form of cliche, would name his CD so prosaically. 

"I wanted the record to be titled Darling Clementine out of pure woefulness. 'Clementine,' the old prairie song, is full of massive double-entendres and bondage-and-domination imagery," he insists. The album sways with the kind of music you'd imagine death-camp inmates played on fiddles as they lurched into the gas chambers. The string section is used for frantic, paranoid effect ("Get Out of My Brain"), and to trace fragile melodies behind an Ian Curtis-somber vocal in "Love" and in "Beautiful," where Steve's spare piano figure crumbles like cake underneath Justin Burrill's delicate acoustic-guitar threading. 

Even prettier is "In Your Room," which is just as haunting as Brian Wilson's "In My Room," minus the solipsism. Instead of staying in his own sandbox, Steve imbues his love object's room with so much mournful adoration that the place sounds more like a sanctuary. But whose room is it? "When I was still living with Elizabeth [Herndon, ex-wife and W.A.C.O. trombonist/flutist], these a birds kept falling out of their nests, and the cats kept killing them," Gregoropoulos says. "We saved this one bird and tried to feed him, and he lasted a pretty long time. We kept him in a shoebox . . . the shoebox was his room." 

Steve's room used to be in Boston, then Amsterdam and Berlin, when he played with W.A.C.O. founders Burrill and bassist Fran Miller in the Wild Stares. After relocating to L.A. in 1988 and hooking up with drummer Kyle C. Kyle (Dred Scott, the Motels), the Wild Stares unplugged the drum machines and guitars and brought out cellos, violas, mandolins, flutes and clarinets, and recast itself as the Wildstares Acoustic Chamber Orchestra. The band's revolving lineup has featured Rob Zabrecky (Possum Dixon) and Koko Puff (Sluts for Hire), and now includes Adam Brisben (Masher), Heather Lockie (Leather Hyman), Dave Travis (Carnage Asada), Teddy Pentagram and Rebecca Lynn (The Bibs), and Jennifer Tefft. 

Refreshingly, Gregoropoulos likes where he is, saying, "I'm a defender of Silver Lake. I definitely want to be on record as part of the Silver Lake-backlash backlash." Just don't get him started about your average guitar-rock band. 

"I'm not really burned out on electric music. I just wouldn't want to incorporate electric music into W.A.C.O., or it would start to sound like American Music Club or Wilco or one of those bands that are sort of electric/acoustic-sounding," he says. "Is there anything inherently wrong with doing the least commercial thing? If you look at it as a wave pattern, some sort of cyclical dynamism, I'd like to think of it as being ahead of the curve." 

When asked if there's an instrument he'd never use in W.A.C.O., Steve replies, "I wouldn't use a synthesizer. [An acoustic instrument] has some presence, you know, properties and sounds of its own." Just like W.A.C.O. itself. 

"Everything in W.A.C.O. is completely idiomatic. Every part has been written for particular people to play. And I used to be such a lazy composer that I would write a bunch of parts and give them away. I wouldn't even Xerox them, and then a different person would come in and I'd have to write different parts, because I couldn't remember what I'd written. It's plastic music."

Ever since the tragic demise of the Davidian cult headquarters back in the early '90s, the word Waco (as in Waco, TX) has conjured up many unpleasant memories. Why bring this up, you ask? Well, apparently the LA-based band WACO suffers as a result of the homonymic moniker. Most people who are familiar with the many-member group know that WACO is actually an acronym for Wild Acoustic Chamber Orchestra. The name happens to be quite fitting for this conglomerate of musicians which includes a stand-up bass, violin, flute, trombone, cello and occasional triangle in their line up.

The band's recent appearance at Largo--which, by the way, was the first in a summer-long series of shows at the intimate West Hollywood venue--started out with a somewhat chilly response when their name was announced. However, it wasn't long before the audience eventually warmed up to the band's captivating sounds. Largo turned out to be an especially appropriate setting for this band because, as you may know, there's always a piano available onstage. And that just happens to work out perfectly for WACO's composer/ leader Steve Gregoropoulos, who prefers to play a real piano rather than the electric one he normally carts around. So all in all, the show--which also featured Caroline Edwards and Geraldine Fibbers' guitarist Nels Cline--turned out to be quite a success. But perhaps WACO should consider changing their name to something less controversial. Might I suggest "Orchestra Junior" or simply "O.J." for short?

Spaceland show 08.04.02
(from Drowning in Culture)

WACO was like a kick in the teeth from your best friend on your wedding day. As the band set up I expected the worst seeing a collection of instruments that simply reeked of the chamber music circuit, but had none of the psychotic qualities of the experimental set. That was at lease until WACO began to play. Man this band is incredible! Their sound closely resembles a car wreck between Philip Glass, the Magnetic Fields, and Lou Reed. The pieces see-sawed back and forth both in time and in structure, shifting from light to dark on a whim and making you want to laugh and cry at the same time. The lyrics of WACO's songs seemed to be from a mixed bag of lost phrases and forgotten allegories, which were blended together into simple poetic constructs that were pleasing in their simple phrasing and arrangement of syntax and style. ... (full review available here)