Business Is Bad is a set of nine songs by the singer, pianist and harmonica player Karen Mantler, released in 2014 on XtraWATT. This is the companion imprint of WATT, the label of her parents Michael Mantler and Carla Bley, distributed by ECM. It was her first album as a leader on the label since Farewell in 1996. The subjects are bill collectors, lawyers, snowstorms and a volcano, sung in a deadpan voice that makes hard luck sound almost funny.
Between the two XtraWATT records Mantler made Karen Mantler's Pet Project for Virgin and played in the Golden Palominos. She also appeared on her parents' albums, among them Michael Mantler's The School of Understanding and Carla Bley's Looking for America. Here she works in a trio with Doug Wieselman on guitar and bass clarinet and Kato Hideki on bass. The basic tracks were cut at Peter Karl Studios in Brooklyn in October 2012, with overdubs at Dog Day Studio between November 2012 and April 2013. Mantler and Kato co-produced, and Kato mixed and mastered the album at Dog Day in 2013.
The arrangements are sparse, with no drums, and every song is Mantler's own. I Can't Afford My Lawyer and the title track, a funky blues, deal with money and a system that does not work in her favour. Speak French alternates English and French lines in the manner of a language course. In My Solo she sings about her nerves before taking a solo, then plays one on harmonica, the longest instrumental passage on the record. That Damn Volcano is about flights grounded by an eruption. My Magic Pencil (Wrote This Melody) moves with a light bossa nova lilt.
Critics took the humour seriously. The New Yorker, quoted by ECM, wrote that "smarts and whimsy intermingle freely and charmingly" in her work. In July 2014 WNYC's Spinning on Air invited the trio to its studio and praised the economy of her songs. Its note tied the album title to the economic downturn. On ECM Reviews in 2015, Tyran Grillo called her "a singer-songwriter of understated brilliance". He singled out the harmonica solo on My Solo as the prettiest instrumental passage of the album.
CD in a jewel case with a 16-page booklet of lyrics, credits, photographs and illustrations, catalogue number XtraWATT/14, originally released on 13 June 2014.
