Music Write-Ups
How do you know Chris Earley?
How many MP3s do you have on your hard drive?
Your 1st through 18th nervous breakdowns:
-Paul Barrett
My girlfriend bought me a banjo for my birthday, which will take some getting used to. I don’t play music enough any more, and miss it.
It’s raining again in Seattle today. It was a nice summer though; we had at least a week of sunlight. People were starting to complain about the 90 plus, so I suppose it was high time the sun went back to bed and allowed the clouds to gray everything out afresh and drip water on the pages of my book while I wait for the bus.
I was sitting in a restaurant last night when a young woman, maybe in her thirties, walked in looking very frail and sick, perambulating with both cane and ostensible husband as aid. She seemed fairly confident and able, though still like deathly ill, either recovering from something big or else, you know, slowly fading away. I saw all the people enjoying themselves around her, drinking beer, eating, confabulating and whatnot, and I thought that seemed pretty unfair. You find yourself in a situation where you’re dying of cancer and you really realize how much you’ve taken life for granted. But what’s the alternative? I sat there for a minute going Man, this is great. I’m very appreciative to be alive right now. This is just…so great. Type thing. Like Man, I’m super glad I’m not dying right now.
Later on, over a German Pilsner, I thought up an invention to keep your beer perfect to the last drop. It’s a hollow cone of metal filled with an advanced chemical composition, a liquid that never freezes but that stays cold for a very long time. You keep the device in your freezer and then when you want a nice frosty pint of lager you drop the thing into your glass and it acts like an ice cube that doesn’t dilute/ruin the beer. Similar to the Guinness widget but only vaguely, in a mechanical sense, minus the spinning. The metal would be the sort with which they make shakers; stainless steel. Thin but strong, gets frosty real quick. Guaranteed to stay cold at least until your beer goes flat. It’s called N’iceTM, the N standing for Non-, like Non-ice, but it’s also a very catchy and marketable pun. A magnetized disc goes on the bottom like a coaster (which it is, too) to keep the cone from tumbling around and into your mouth, in case you were wondering about that issue.
I sort of want a dog. A black lab which I’d name Augie. First thing though I need a house with a yard for him to live in, and I’d barbecue out there when it was sunny, play some music while stuff cooked, like maybe I’d know some banjo chords by then, and we’d drink cold pints while we played. The theme of the party would be how good life is, but it would be an unstated theme that need not be mentioned.
-Paul Barrett
Upon its release in June of 1997, Radiohead’s OK Computer was met with immediate and nearly universal acclaim, vaulting the band to reputed Best in the World cachet with exceptional rapidity. Extolled with such accolades as “one of the finest albums humanity has ever seen” and “one of the greatest albums of living memory” (Q magazine called it simply the best album of all time), it occupied the highest echelons of copious Year’s Best lists, including those of NME, Melody Maker, the Village Voice’s Pazz & Jop Critics’ Poll, and Spin. The years following its release also brought much artistic response, the first (and, until now, most successful) example being Grant Gee’s brilliant 1999 documentary Meeting People is Easy, which shows the band’s reaction to its overnight celebrity. Of course, while ex post facto eulogizing and critical exegeses abound—Dai Griffiths’s arithmetical examination of the album for Continuum’s 33 1/3 series, the straight-to-DVD film OK Computer: Under Review—it is the musical tribute that has comprised most of OK Computer’s secondhand legacy in the ten years following its release. See “Rodeohead,” a bluegrass medley of Radiohead songs performed by stand up comedians Chris Hardwick and Mike Phirman, see classical pianist Christopher O’Riley’s True Love Waits and Hold Me to This LPs, see Exit Music: Songs with Radio Heads, a hip-hop/electronic tribute to the band, Skeet Spirit, a crunk tribute, Corporate Love Breakdown, a bluegrass tribute, Plastic Mutations, an electronic tribute, and Anyone Can Play Radiohead, a good old-fashioned rock tribute. Further, see two track-for-track tribute LPs, The Section’s Strung Out on OK Computer and Easy Star All-Stars’ Radiodread, respective chamber and reggae interpretations of the album.
Given the fatuous and impolitic nature of most of the above, one wonders whether, decennial aside, the world truly needs yet another OK tribute. Considering further the fact that the band has already released three post-OK LPs (one of which, 2000’s Kid A, many consider artistically superior) and are currently working on a fourth, one realizes it may be about time for us all to move on. Are we truly ready to shut the door on this though, to extinguish all possibility of that singular apogee of OK-panegyrics, that tribute album of bona fide OK Computer stature? Slated for a special Sunday release on July 1 to celebrate OK’s original U.S. arrival date, OC Computer: A Classic Revisited by Artists from Fox’s The OC promises to be that very apogee, that necessary insurmountable and lasting piece of artistic homage to Radiohead’s seminal record. The brain-child of Josh Schwartz and Scott Schirley, respective creator and music editor of the smash-hit teensoap The OC, this per-song tribute is far more deliberate, more conscious than its predecessors. Proving their musical matchmaking prowess goes beyond the realm of serial television, the duo collates twelve of the show’s most popular featured bands who in turn—despite myriad existing tributes—take the songs each to wholly new places.
Things commence predictably enough with the auteurs of the show’s appropriated theme song, Phantom Planet, whose rendition of “Airbag” is similarly upbeat and straightforward. Singer Alex Greenwald diligently excises much of Yorke’s wordless crooning and relies on his signature mixture of late-teen confidence and early-twenties nostalgic lament; the song sheds its English getup and dons a faux-vintage tee and some Abercrombie cargo shants. Like a prologue, the song fades quickly, giving way to Conor Oberst’s über-stripped, sad-folk take on the epic “Paranoid Android.” With nothing but his trusty six-string and ever-maturing vocal chords, Oberst (alone, though credited as Bright Eyes) plods slowly through this classic, the lack of computer-generated voice, layered guitars, electronic bleep-bloops, and driving bass line only serving to emphasize the narrator’s naked vulnerability; when he croaks “What’s there?” it’s no longer just a refrain but a desperate plea. The time changes are dead-on, and energy seems to amass rather than fluctuate—by song’s end it’s hard to imagine a few guitar strings haven’t snapped. Following this behemoth even Radiohead’s original “Subterranean Homesick Alien,” often cited as one of OK’s weaker tracks, would surely pale, but here it’s given a nice anthemic, pseudo-punk boost by L.A.-via-Chicago funsters OK Go. Honoring their name’s titular reference to the album, the band flirts with the meta here, referencing their own oeuvre by digressing into an idiosyncratic chorus straight out of “You’re So Damn Hot,” then segueing back seamlessly. Twinkling backdrop tremolos are reproduced verbatim by a cheap eBay synthesizer used maybe once on a Weezer b-side, though apart from this the track rests comfortably atop a satisfying mountain of chunk. And it’s certainly chunk that’s needed to set the tone for The Suicide Machines, whose bombastic hardcore-punk/ska format might otherwise feel out of place. Indeed, despite the band’s seemingly irreconcilable stylistic differences with the somber, spooky, slow-burner “Exit Music,” this track stands out as one of OC’s strongest. Without a chorus to hinge on, the Machines alternate genres per verse, performing the final one twice. “We hope/ that you choke/ that you choke” seems all in good fun accompanied by groovy contrabass, up-strumming, a snare-driven beat, and doo-wop harmonizing, but when the distortion pedals kick back in, those same words carry with them some frighteningly serious implications.
Lady Sovereign heads up the album’s groove-heavy midsection by stripping all recognizable melody from “Let Down” and replacing it with lead-heavy bass swoops, slick-quick beeboobeeps, and choppy spurts of jive. “Let down, hangin’ around,” she repeats relentlessly, using the line as lyrical anchor to Yorke’s fragmented stanzas, which she also rattles off with casual, dangerous ease. The UK grimester’s juvenescence is revealed, however, when Southern crunk king T.I. drops the first beat of “Karma Police.” Heavier than all of Great Britain, this track is alarmingly driven, the lyrics completely apposite; “This is what you get/ when you mess with us” definitely sounds like an open invitation to an ass-whooping. And still the integrity of Radiohead’s version is maintained—somehow the track still feels the same. Perhaps it’s the piano line sampled straight from the original’s intro, but more likely it’s T.I.’s delivery—intense and earnest—that recalls Yorke’s own. Transplants, whose breakthrough 2002 hit “Diamonds and Guns” has since been wasted hawking Garnier shampoo, follow up by dumping trainloads of sampled guitar riffs, buzzsaw synthbass, chopped-to-hell drums et al into their take on “Fitter Happier.” Here the track becomes a proper song, stepping up from its previous stature as side A/side B divider. Whether they’ve kept the original computer-generated vocals or dusted off their own Apple LCIII to recreate them is unclear, but the aim here is clearly not sociopolitical commentary via obtuse David Byrne–like non sequiturs. Instead the impassive voice takes a back seat as the trio stuffs as much volume into Pro Tools as possible to produce a veritable noisefest, an all-out assault with just enough recognizable rhythm to keep your foot tapping. It’s like listening to Warhol’s “Five Deaths,” were such a thing possible. Above the din Armstrong screams the final lines, “A pig/ in a cage/ on antibiotics” ten times in a row, the live-human vocals sounding at first capricious and then, through repetition, relegating themselves back into the realm of the mass-produced, the nightmarish, inhuman arena of pure technology. Gwen Stefani provides the final leg of this mid-record dance party, and it’s almost dumbfounding how comfortable her marriage with “Electioneering,” OK’s most raucous track, feels. Making no bones about shedding the dread and panic of the original, Gwen and producer Timbaland massage the thing into a rattly rump-shaker, the lines “I go forward/ you go backward/ somewhere we will meet” alone comprising enough sass to tax even the surest of Hokey Pokeyers—or Kama Sutra enthusiasts.
Thereafter, however, comes the biggest disappointment of the album, its necessary Achilles’ heel, it’s intentional Amish mis-stitch. Rooney, known for its feel-good/feel-blue, Brian-Wilson-meets-The-Strokes radiopop, decide to wax Black Heart Procession–ish in an ill-conceived attempt to make “Climbing Up the Walls,” one of the darkest tracks in Radiohead’s entire repertoire, even darker. Give them points for their derring-do, for the innovative use of the saw, but at six minutes long, the dirge may have benefited from a nice uplifting synth solo instead. One wonders if Rooney’s fraternal connection to Phantom Planet had something to do with their inclusion here. Luckily though, Death Cab for Cutie, immortal and undisputed indie-rock kings, veritable doers of no wrong, follow quickly behind; their lilting, melting, butterfly-wing-fragile rendition of “No Surprises” is the most beautiful track on the album, and it lends a welcome hand as aural janitor. Gibbard takes some liberties with the lyrics, particularly at the end of the first verse: “I hate the quiet guys/ I can’t change/ the garbage on our side,” he swoons. In the hands of a less-accomplished poet this sort of license might have seemed blasphemous, but he pulls it off with panache. A rousing acoustic jam follows the final chorus, cuts off cold a-la “I Want You (She’s So Heavy)” and twenty-eight seconds of pure sobering silence precede Less Than Jake’s cover of OK’s crux, “Lucky,” which accomplishes in just a minute-fourteen what it took Radiohead over three times as long to do: slay listener ear. It’s interesting, the decision to bulk up OC’s final tracks with so much energy, considering, among so many other things, that integral triangle-ting at the close of OK Computer. The quietude that follows this single, resonant note is unnerving; there’s so much left unresolved you’re almost forced to spin the disc again to see what you must have missed. Here, instead, Something Corporate turn “The Tourist” into a fist-pumping, fun-loving, punk/emo tribute to all things youthful, after which the only thing you’ll want to hear is the sound of your Converse going through the window of a Banana Republic in South Coast Plaza.
Despite perceived philosophical disparities—Radiohead’s world-weary warnings against consumerism and image vs. The OC’s apparent celebration of both—the compilation is a solid and cohesive triumph. Not surprisingly, Schwartz attributes this unprecedented congruity to close collaboration with the band: “They were rad to work with, actually,” he says. “Granted it was mostly Capitol [Records, Radiohead’s U.S. label] who we spoke to, mostly, but Thom and Johnny both told me that they were total fans of the show, which is like, like it was totally sick to hear that.” Nor should this come as a surprise—the band authorized “Fog (Again),” a live b-side from the “Go To Sleep” single, for use in a season-three episode of the show, an uncharacteristic move for them. Further, “Black Swan,” from Yorke’s solo album The Eraser, appears a season later in episode four. Which is not to say that an amaranthine OC-marathon is necessarily the reason for the new ‘head album’s delay, but Against The Day is only so many pages long—the band has to be doing something to occupy themselves in the meantime. In any case, for those going bald in anticipation of Hail to the Thief’s imminent follow-up, for those upon whom the opening bars of “Karma Police” unleash a consistently pleasant wave of subtle, undefinable nostalgia; hell, if you’ve never even heard OK Computer before, OC Computer is a purchase of absolute necessity, a worthy encomium to the defining album of a generation.
-Paul Barrett
Concept: Celebrity face-lifts, breast-enhancements, and cosmetic surgery as a whole are more popular than ever, and the American public want to see them happening, if TV specials like “Remaking Vince Neil” are any indication, which they are. Further, The Anna Nicole Show, Newlyweds, The Osbournes, etc., in which we get an inside, fly-on-the-wall glimpse at how our favorite celebrity friends go about their days, have given way to shows like The Simple Life and Tommy Lee Goes to College, where a celebrity is taken completely out of his or her element and given a task or job he/she knows nothing about, making for basically unlimited laughs (e.g. in season three “The Simple Life: Interns” where Paris asks the bus driver to pull over at a Burger King just so she can get something to eat—hilarious). Combine on-screen surgery with a decontextualized celebrity and all you’ll be able to hear for miles is cash registers going Ching-ching! Ching-ching! and people laughing themselves off the couch, trust me.
Synopsis: Marilyn Manson, platinum-selling musician, actor/director, painter, and general cultural icon/pariah/scapegoat/boat-rocker starts a cosmetic surgery practice called The Beautiful People and evites various celebrities to come get a face-lift, breast implants, lip-injections, whatever they want. Sounds innocent enough, but with Manson’s mind being as twisted as it is there are bound to be some very “interesting” results, like when Katie Holmes leaves with only ONE of her breasts augmented, and we’re talking basketball-big. Whoops! The practice itself is real (no Hollywood sets), as are the surgeries; at the beginning of each episode a disclaimer appears in white, official-looking Helvetica Neue against a black screen and is read by someone with a very serious-sounding voice, maybe one of the Baldwin brothers: “While some of the dialog of this show has been scripted, the surgeries themselves are 100% real.” The disclaimer is the sort of thing that people will be saying along with the serious-sounding voice and it may even become part of the general cultural consciousness, with people changing it around to fit various contexts. For example if you go to a bar with a bunch of friends you might be like, “Hold on you guys, hold on,” like you need to make an announcement before everyone dives into their beers, and the announcement goes, all mock-serious-like: “While some of the dialog of this night has been scripted, the beers themselves are 100% real.” Type thing. Anyway, after the disclaimer comes the blistering and catchy-as-Hell theme song, a truncated/clipped version of Manson’s classic 1998 single “I Don’t Like the Drugs (But the Drugs Like Me).” The song refers, of course, to the drugs employed during the surgical process (some of which Manson often takes himself before going in with the scalpel, saying maybe, “I didn’t want to do that, but I had to.” After a wait-for-it beat or two he’ll add something like, “It’s in my contract,” which talk of contracts and the inner workings of a reality show itself is very high-brow, and it gets a laugh from test audiences every time. Manson has a very charming, albeit sardonic, demeanor, and the show’s viewers finds themselves immediately taken with him.) There’s a second reference in the theme song, however, a more obscure one which Manson explains in the pilot episode. The “Drugs” in the context of Dr. Manson, he says, represent celebrities in general, and also American culture as a whole, both of which Manson states that he despises, for the most part, though it is quite ironic that American culture, and indeed many celebrities, are conversely fascinated with him. Thusly we get a perfect embodiment of the show’s ethos, as well as some insight into the havoc Manson wreaks on these celebs’ physical persons. Each star is made to sign a waiver stating that they know exactly what they’re getting themselves into, and that they can’t sue Manson or Fox for giving them an extra nose right above their asshole (which very trick Manson gleefully performs in episode two on Leonardo DiCaprio, who pretends to be stoked about it, stating over and over, all drugged-up and post-surgical, what a “huge fan” he is, but it’s clear he’s actually pretty pissed). While the theme song plays we see a montage of some of the show’s funniest visual gags, like when Manson performs open-heart on Howard Stern without his (Manson’s) scrub-pants or underwear on, or when Katherine Heigl insists on being completely nude during her surgery—refusing also any sort of blanket, any coverage whatsoever—and instead of Manson’s original plan (which we learn when this episode, episode seven, airs) of “just a simple little titty job, maybe some ass work,” he performs cunnilingus on her until she achieves orgasm, despite being completely unconscious. All nudity is, of course, blurred out, but this is just all the more incentive for people to purchase the multi-disc Season One DVD, which will have “Uncut and Unrated!” printed big on the cover, like a subtitle. After the theme song, the first of the patients arrive at The Beautiful People via a private limo. Sometimes clips of the limo ride are shown, where the driver asks his trademark question, “Are you nervous?” to which almost everyone answers they’re more nervous about meeting Marilyn than going under the knife, being such huge fans of his, though not one of them ever notices that the driver is actually former Manson keyboardist Madonna Wayne Gacy. Each patient is made to sit in the waiting room whose magazine racks are full of hilariously ironic issues of Human Events or Christianity Today, and the greater the celeb’s interest in the magazines, the longer their wait. This of course provides endless laughs. Finally, the patient is given a surgical robe and brought into Manson’s OR by Nurse Houston (yes, the porn star) where Manson says something like “Well, what can we do for you today?” Sometimes a patient (they skew about 83% female) will request specific treatment (usually breast implants) though often she (or he) will leave it up to Manson. Big mistake, for this is when things start to get freaky—and bloody; the star is put under and Manson starts cutting, tucking, stitching, and re-arranging with reckless abandon, all the while providing hilarious non-sequiturs, farting, and pulling up on the patient’s elastic waistband and peeking in. This is done with both male and female patients, almost regularly, and is referred to as the “bush check” or the “manhood test.” After their surgery a patient is given a bit of time to come off the drugs, but not much, before being interviewed. Despite the hideous transformations they’ve just undergone, they usually seem oddly pleased, saying things like “I love it. I’ve never looked this good since I was eighteen” or “This is the best thing that’s ever happened to me.” After commercial break we see the limo again, which brings the second patient. Each episode will feature two surgeries, allowing a half-hour for each, minus commercials, which is ample time for tons of laughs, guts, and thinly veiled sexual innuendo. The show’s true genius is that you really can’t afford to miss an episode; who wants to see Abigail Breslin on Access Hollywood with hands for feet and feet for hands, collapsing left and right, unable to walk or hold a microphone, and not know exactly how she got to that point? No one does.
Pilot Episode (two hours): In the pilot’s first half-hour we get some insight (though fabricated) into the creation of The Beautiful People. Manson draws up a business plan, visits a bunch of strip clubs and various S&M shops to get some ideas for the place’s decor, goes on Wikipedia and scans some articles about surgery in the Middle Ages. We see the creation of his practice in super-fast-motion, from abandoned warehouse to dark, sexy medical facility. Manson sits in his newly completed office behind a dark mahogany desk with blood-red maroon velvet top and jives for a while, talking about some of what he hopes to achieve with Dr. Manson, calling it “basically the same thing as a Marilyn Manson show, only for once I won’t be the one getting cut open.” Patients comprise Smashing Pumpkins bassist D’arcy, who comes away with a complete (meaning absolute full-body) skin graft from an African American—while she’s under, Manson explains, “I’m hoping to give her some rhythm here”; Christina Ricci, whose face Manson reinstalls on the small of her back, like a coed’s tribal tattoo; and Sarah DiMuro, who gets an actual penis put first in, and then on her.
-Paul Barrett
I’m like eight when my dad buys me my first guitar. My hands are too small by heaps but I manage to pick up the first nine notes, in order, of the bassline to “Badge” and the A-D-E-D progression of “Louie Louie,” which latter I eek out in front of my parents, starry-eyed (them), on the floor of their bedroom. If I practice enough, hours tallied on the chalk board in the kitchen, I get Any CD I Want, and having recently fallen in love with Music via my dad’s copy of Full Moon Fever, I set my sights on Into the Great Wide Open. A decade and change later I switch to the bass and form one of the seminal bands, let’s call it thee seminal band, of the early-2000s Californian Central Coast instrumental dance/rock scene, we release one album to some acclaim and break up before my dad has a chance to see us play. The Beatles, The Doors, Led Zeppelin, The Rolling Stones, Tom Waits, Van Morrison, CSNY, Paul Simon, The Beach Boys, Hendrix, The Replacements, Squeeze, Dylan, Cream, The Who, The Byrds, some of this only while my mom is out shopping though. Over dinner we’re supposed to guess what’s the theme, the CD player shuffling Harvest Moon, Late For the Sky, and Georgia Satellites or else “Broken Arrow,” “A Day in the Life,” and, like, I dunno. Not “Miserable Lie” but something like it. For a family road trip to Washington state my dad buys me Damn the Torpedoes and Fisherman’s Blues on cassette, and it’s pretty clear his Walkman is kind of unofficially mine for keeps now. Eventually I move to Seattle, which is crazy, if you think about it. Because of the road trip, I mean. The first one is like a sky theme and the second has to do with structure.
-Paul Barrett
From spacetravelisboring.geocities.com, a Modest Mouse fan site:
posted by lonesomewesterner on 11-23-2002 @ 04:11:07 AM
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One of my fave mm songs off this album. When he says ‘takes a long time but god dies too’ it’s like isaac is saying people need to stop thinking about whats right in front of them all the time and living in the here and now. Even god whose supposed to be the be all end all of creation, even he dies, it just takes a really long time. There’s a lot of talk of infinity within mm’s lyrics, esp like the song neverending math equation, and back on TM&A, 3rd planet, where he says ‘well the universe is shaped exactly like the earth if you go straight long enough you end up where you were’. It might take infinity years (so to speak) but even god will eventually die. issac is funny b/c he knows humans cant grasp the concept of infinity but he’s smart enough to play with his listeners’s minds and sort of play with them.
posted by lifelikeweeds on 12-21-2002 @ 05:47:26 AM
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The presence of God w/in a person vs. the alienation of human beings among each other on their own planet is a great juxtaposition, that supreme connection contrasted with the lack of regular everyday human interaction/connection. Imagine living on the moon or antarctica, the moon is in heaven (God) and Antarctica is on earth (humans). Either way, it’s a totally lonely existence if you live metaphorically or literally in either of those areas.
posted by basketcase on 12-23-2002 @ 08:14:19 PM
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I’ve heard that Issac is an atheist…anyone?
posted by moderncomplx on 12-29-2002 @ 05:37:02 PM
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I never liked this song that much, its OK but the jammy part at the end kills it by going on too long, and wastes time before getting to the best track “Lives”. I usu. skip it. “My mom God is a woman and my mom she is a witch” great lyric even if its depressing.
posted by CowboyDan on 02-07-2003 @ 11:53:12 AM
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What makes this album so great is all the religion and existentialism in the lyrics, Brock & co. have obviously been reading their Sartre! I wont list a ton of examples from the album because if you know anything about existentialism (the notion that when your alive you have to make the best of it because theres no afterlife or “Greater Meaning” to anything) their super easy to pick out. My favorite though is on Dark Center of the Universe when he says “God said something but he didn’t mean it everyone’s life ends but no one ever completes it. Dry or wet ice they both melt and your equally cheated” It’s pretty bleack at first blush but really its beautiful (using ice as a symbol is perfect as its cold and bleack and full of ice in antartica (part of the album title, obviously), and most people think its nothing but depressing and lonely there, but if you’ve ever seen a real glacier its one of the most beautiful and awe inspiring things you’ll see in the world). So another tennent of existentialism is learning to see the beauty in life, since its all we have. Alot of people, even true fans, see this is a depressing and Nihilistic record but I think in reality Isaac just is making fun of people who are religious or believe in “God”. I think he mentions God in pretty much every song on this album, either explicitly or implicitly, making the point that if your so worried about what God thinks you miss out on whats really important, whats here physically. Of course from MM this criticism comes out in a funny, sarcastic way. Isaac Brock’s lyrics always totally kick ass.
posted by Raptr1943 on 03-17-2003 @ 03:18:27 AM
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Isaac Brock is a corporate crack-shooting whore who shoudl eat shit for selling out and singing to Epic which is owned by Sony, one of the most cocksucking capitalist dick corporations in the world. Modest Mouse use to be one of my favorite bands, it’s sad that corporate america could even get to them, who i thought were such “true artists”.
posted by robotheart on 03-19-2003 @ 12:05:14 AM
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Agreed, Dan. Great lyrics throughout. One of my top three albums of all times. Beats Lonesome Crowded and Long Drive any day. Can’t wait for the next disc, bet it’s def. going to be incredible to.
posted by man_in_white_suit on 03-25-2003 @ 06:24:01 PM
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I love the great playful drumbeat/weird guitars coupled against the existential lyrics. Modest mouse is one of those great pop bands whose songs are totally catchy but the lyrics are dark and have meaning to them. At the same time you could be driving in your car down PCH and scream out the poppy chorus, “Oh-oh, oooh, oh-oh, ooooh, oh-oh, ooooh, oh-oh oh-oh oh-oh-oh-oh” thinking how good life is and the next minute you’re thinking about being reincarnated as dirt. Scary. Awesome and crazy. Anyone have any take on what the “bad inventions” IB talks about at the end of the intro? Could be a symbol of humans themselves, we are all God’s “bad inventions” maybe?
posted by TheRecycler on 05-17-2003 @ 10:19:09 AM
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Raptr1943, first off if you’re going to insult someone you should use spell check because in the end you come off looking like the unintelligent one. Second have you ever been in a band? It’s nice and good to claim that you would never sell out until you have a wife and a few kids to support. Music is art and for Modest Mouse it’s also a living. The more money they make the more chance there is that they will come out with another album instead of waiting tables somwhere and anyway if you look past what label the record is on it doesn’t change the fact that it’s widely agreed that this is there best album yet. I could only dream that my band could create a piece of art even a quarter as amazing as Moon & Antartica, or write one song as great as any one song on it, especially Came as a Rat or Alone Down There, and if you ask me if I’d sign a contract with Epic or any of the other bigger labels I’d say yes I would in a second, and I’m not ashamed of it as it doesn’t make me a sellout by a long shot. I don’t want to call myself an “artist” necessarily and sound pretentious but yes I’m a musician and also, yes, I have kids and a mortgage. The sort of sentiment you’re voicing is, to be honest, sort of immature, ignorant, and comes from someone, I’m guessing, who’s pretty wrapped up in HIMSELF, someone who hasn’t had the experience of true love or childbirth to show them that wow, maybe there are other things more important in live than me me me. Anyway don’t be so quick to criticize somoene when you’ve never been in their own shoes, that’s all.
posted by madd_dogg on 07-12-2003 @ 07:39:35 PM
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Theres a lot of incorrect interpretations on this thread, which I’ll try to clear up some of here. First off, t he song is pretty obviously, as man_in_white_suit mentioned, about reincarnation. “I came as a rat…I came as a whore…I came as ice…dirt…flowers….” etc. It’s true that Brock plays with the notion of the infinite vs. the finite, eg reincarnation seems to be a viscious cycle that never ends, but he also says that even God dies. Infinity, while “invented” or at least discovered, conceptually, by humans around 400BC (I highly recommend David Foster Wallace’s book “Everything and Nothing: A Compact History of Infinity” for anyone who’s a fan of Modest Mouse and akin to the themes that Brock discusses herein), is not a concept that the human mind is capable of grasping fully. Think of the huggest room ever. There are no walls, no floor, no ceiling. Where does that room end? How “big” is it? This is impossible for us to understand as we exist in the realm of the physical and use quantitative methods to describe everything. Cheryl is 5 feet 7 inches tall. That glass of water is half empty. etc. We can think about infinity, we can talk about it as a concept, we can even understand what it MEANS per se, but we cannot truly grasp its implications. CowboyDan, you might want to brush up on your Philosophy 101, specifically the existentialism chapter. While there is a good amount of existentialism on this record (Life Like Weeds, 3rd Planet, et al), I’m not sure your examples are spot on. An existentialist would be hard pressed to be awe-inspired by nature, for example. Also, hate to be a pedantic but it’s “bleak” not “bleack.” Anyway, I’ll keep this short, the whole connection with god vs. connection with other humans is interesting but I think this song is more of an individual statement about Brock as an individual. Through intellectualism and self-knowledge he rises above the ostensible constructs of a finite and maybe even infinite existence, eg breaking bottles and walking around on them in his bare feet, knowing it doesn’t matter, his physical body is temporal, pain is a human construct, etc., declaring he doesn’t need anyone else to define him (”I do not need you to tell me that I’m not a cat”), and almost using reincarnation to his own advantage as a tool, coming back as whatever he wants, whenever he wants, then coming back as something else if that doesn’t work. “I came too soon so I cam back.” Who’s really in control here? The answer is obvious.
posted by swiss_apples on 07-28-2003 @ 12:52:22 AM
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Hey all! just want to say this is one of my favorite songs by “The Mouse” as well, I think it’s a great unique image when the singer says “Caught a ride we caught some air, he’s never gonna cut his hair” this is an image of death, i think, catching some air or catching a ride meaning going up to heaven, and then the symbol of when you die your fingernails and your hairs keep growing even when you die, which is what the second part of the lyric means. Brilliant! I also love the next part “It takes more time to make a fake” when hte singer means people put so much time and effort into lying and being fake and putting forth a fake image of themself to impress people when it would be so much easier for everyone if they were just more honest to people. OK That’s all! Thanx for listening!
posted by The_Tourist on 08-01-2003 @ 04:47:13 AM
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That lyric always makes me laugh, “I came too soon so I came back,” b/c of the sexual implications of “coming too soon.”
posted by mynameisjonas on 09-21-2003 @ 10:16:43 PM
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Sorry just not one of my favorite modest mouse songs by far
posted by CowboyDan on 09-25-2003 @ 07:51:01 PM
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The_Tourist, are you joking?
posted by xHolden_Caulfieldx on 10-24-2003 @ 01:37:46 AM
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Not sure about the individualism idea, Madddogg, esp. since in the beginning of the song the vocals are double-tracked, and even though both tracks are Isaac’s voice, it still hints at a strong human interaction, since there are sung as different styles. Similarly, the chorus sounds like there are at least two vocal tracks, maybe more, and the echoy effects really open it up so that it soudns like a real Greek Chorus, in the literal historical sense of the word. Sonically, this is one of the best most innovative songs on the album. The backwards parts before the chorus are recorded backwards, which adds to the element of infinity, which alot of people have talked about already, there’s alot of odd sounds especially in the “jammy part” and what sounds like a rocket taking off, it really creates a “physical soundscape” if that makes sense. It sounds like outer space in a way (another vast empire, a great human manifestation of “the infinite”). I also love the way the song is divided, sonically, between him singing alone, the song is pretty simple with just a few tracks, then like I said the chorus really opens it up. Great sonic juxtaposition. Kudos to Brian Deck on this one! (produced the album).
posted by audiorelapse on 11-17-2003 @ 09:51:07 PM
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If you listen to songs like Life of Arctic sounds it’s pretty clear Issac is an existentialism.
-Paul Barrett
(Egotistical Showboat Angel interviews its altar-ego, Modest Showboat Angel)
ESA: So when you wrote yourself, did you realize you’d be one of the greatest songs of all time?
MSA: Well, I mean…I mean songs don’t, I mean you know as well as I do that songs don’t write themselves. It’s a common, like that’s exactly what bands are always saying to record label people breathing down their necks for new material you know, you know it’s like Hey man songs don’t write themselves you know, it takes work. Sort of thing. Anyway I—
ESA: OK right sure sure of course credit the band credit the band of course. I hear you. Respect. Mmm hmm.
MSA: Well of…of course. Like where would a kid be without his parents, I mean he wouldn’t, like without his mother or—
ESA: Woah. Waxing metaphysical on me here. Like waxing existential and stuff all of a sudden. Steve, (looks over his shoulder) you want to…want to get a dictionary in here? You know? (laughs) Anyway.
MSA: Well no it’s…I mean you know what I mean. Without the band…anyway no they didn’t set out to write the Great American Song or anything, I’m sure—
ESA: Great American Novel.
MSA: The—?
ESA: The Great American Novel. The G. A. N. You read much?
MSA: Not…I mean I…
ESA: Top three books of all time, top three written in the twentieth century, and your personal favorite top three authors. Go.
MSA: I…I don’t…
ESA: Ulysses, Lolita, War and Peace. In that order. Twentieth century Ulysses, Lolita, Passage to India. Quote me on that. Surprised about the third choice maybe, most people would say Gatsby. Not me, it’s diet lit. Read it in an hour. Personal favorites same. Joyce Nabokov Dostoevsky. Done. Do it with painters, too.
MSA: Right I’m not much of a…
ESA: Not much of a reader I can tell. For one thing Tolstoy wrote War and Peace, not Nabokov, I mean not Dostoevsky rather. Threw that in there as a test. Picasso, Da Vinci, Rembrandt. Not a cliché if it’s true. Duchamp’s a maybe I’ll throw him in there too as a backup. Anyway what’s your best quality. What do you love most about yourself.
MSA: Well I’m, well OK let’s see. I guess I’m pretty chill. I like, you know, I get along with most everyone.
ESA: Not everyone though. Don’t say everyone. Don’t degrade yourself to pop. Don’t deny yourself that artistic edge. Prekop’s an artist, same with Prewitt. End of story. And I’m talking visual, not just music. I mean you’re not going to see any Fallout Boy records released on Thrill Jockey is what I’m saying. Don’t kid yourself. What else.
MSA: I’m…I guess there’s sort of a summer vibe to me that’s kind of nice. Sort of like—
ESA: Sure sure like that chill summer vibe with just enough melancholy to remind you of the oncoming autumn, right. I mean I own “Crooked Rain Crooked Rain” too, you know? Who doesn’t. More distortion there though, I mean we’re not talking “Slanted and Enchanted” but still. And then you’ve got like Bad Fish, that’s a great song for the summer as well. You a Sublime fan?
MSA: I guess, like their first album was pretty good.
ESA: You mean their self-titled probably, not their first proper LP of course. Yeah it was all right I guess. Few good tracks. OK I think I’m going to… (looks over shoulder, flips through notes) Hey Steve how much time we got? OK. Plenty of time. Oh three minutes? Wait thirty or three? Three minutes? Jesus. What am I Warewolves of London? I mean what am I Sussudio? Jesus Christ. All right all right where was I. OK, “Live on the East side, tired of the sun comin’ up, live on the West side, tired of the sun goin’ down,” man what a great lyric. Pretty indicative of the human condition you know it’s like wherever you go, there you are. Home is where the OK where…sorry I’m sort of, I’ve sort of lost my place here. Quick, top three songs of all time go.
MSA: Um wow maybe…maybe something from…I mean of all time?
ESA: Jesus, are you…I mean are you even, like, with me here? Hello. Top three songs of all time, man what a gas. Hey Steve, you get a load of this guy? (looks over his shoulder again, gestures)
MSA: Right. So…anyway, what I…I guess what I—
ESA: Hey Steve is my mike on? Am I, I mean are we on still? (pulls off microphone) What’s [indecipherable] (gets up and walks off, fiddles with collar)
MSA: (looks around, looks over his shoulder; pulls out cellphone, looks at it, puts it away; shifts a little in chair; shifts again)
-Paul Barrett
Dude so my boyfriend’s always like pointing this one guy out that we always see around town like he’s all Shit there goes that crazy dude who’s like mad 3x fashion-forward and shit and like, his iPod’s probably straight up full of stuff that I’m going to be listening to in like two years from now I’m positive of it. Fine. I get it. But I’m always saying how Think about it the guy who first said wearing dope threads and knowing what music kicks ass like two years before everyone else realizes it kicks ass is probably the same dude who just went out and bought a bunch of weird old shirts and some super-obscure LPs from Amoeba and then just said like Yo this is what’s cool. Me. Only because in reality he wasn’t cool at all, fundamentally, as in as a person, but he figured like if you put something shitty and boring in a kick-butt package it’s going to turn that shit to gold. Not true. Like sometimes gold comes packaged in shit and shit can also come packaged in gold. Look at Bjork for example. Vespertine, Medulla, Homogenic, whatever, all kick-ass cover concepts and liner artwork, with the costumes and makeup and drawings and shit, or the typography or whatnot, for example, but the music is annoying as sixty screaming babies starving for mother’s milk and how the reason they’re all so hungry is instead of feeding them the moms are just sitting there running their long-ass nails across like a million chalkboards so loud they can’t even hear their babies, but we can, we hear the screaming and the scratching all at once in like a mad bizzare yelpy cacophony that’s supposed to be cute or art or some shit. And but like I mean it almost works. Like is rich-black text printed on a regular black background cool? YES. It totally is. Is futuristic Japanese scary-looking evil geisha cool? Rhetorical question; of course it’s cool. And her videos, it’s like, Michel Gondry? Obviously cool, and he just dresses in like jeans all the time, and not even designer. Anyway, you can stare at those Bjork covers for hours, pour through the conceptual liner notes and whatnot, I guess, I mean you can throw the discs away for all anyone’s going to care (rip it to your iTunes first though! Play it at a party or some shit just to spark conversation or see who pretends to be all cool and all like Oh I love this record I love Bjork first.) and still get your money’s worth just because of that cover art. On the other hand, Boris might as well have just burned a ton of those mini CD-Rs of ONLY the first song on Pink and saved themselves a bunch of studio time and design/paper/printing/A&R money, or even just put the song on their website and let people download it for free and not even come out with an album at all, I mean save the world some landfill space, plus me having to look at that gay pink shit every time I want to play it. Especially now since iPods have the cover art on the screen - like before it was you could just avoid the cover art all together on your iPod, now it’s like, you have to like, anyway what I did was I found this funny-ass jpeg of this tall dude trying to fit into a Volkswagen and put that as the cover art instead. That shit makes me laugh every time I play the song. Which I mean I play it a lot. I mean you’re riding the bus through the city and you laugh out loud all by yourself from looking at a funny picture or something, that’s what’s cool, if you ask me — I mean that right there that’s what cool is. Everyone these days cares so much how they look compared to how everyone else looks or like Shit man, check out my new Adidas they’re NEON RAINBOW colored, Aw shit bro I never thought of that mine used to be cool I thought they’re like they have Paula Abdul’s FACE all over them, remember her?, Yeah man that was pretty cool maybe back in like 1985 or some shit, like maybe before she went on American Idol or whatever. Type thing. Is that what friendship means today? I guess so but it sounds more like oneupmanship to me. Anyway not caring. That’s what’s cool. Not caring if someone else on the bus, someone all hipstered out with like their Hitler mustache and like fugly irono-mullet and jeans so tight you can see their penis-veins, sees you laughing and is all Pfft. What a loser. Emotion is gay. Type thing. Anyway forget that guy. Sort of like that annoying Shins song Caring is Creepy. Except it’s not creepy in this context it’s just uncool. So anyway it’s not always just the literal packaging that can blow; like the Boris album cover itself is sort of lame, I mean I just got tired of it since it’s pretty boring but that first song (Parting) is basically like the one golden egg in a box full of ten other rotten ones. Like as soon as that opening track ends the next one immediately turns all shreddy and loud and big-dickish. And like what’s crazy and ironic is probably just as I’m hitting repeat to listen to (Parting) again, that same hipster asshole who’s judging me is probably skipping OVER that track and shredding out in his head to the rest of the record while being extremely careful not to show any sort of outward emotion about it. And but instead he puts the volume hella up so that everyone’s like Woah look at that fucking dude with the eurostache and his music all loud I wonder what he’s listening to it’s probably kick-ass but there’s no way I’m going to ask him he looks too cool for me to even talk to woah look at his kick-butt shoes too woah. Anyway no matter how loud he turns it up it won’t matter to me since I have those cripplingly expensive new Bose noise-canceling headphones which make (Parting) sound crushing as all hell. The song sounds OK on speakers and not so great on those iPod Earbugs or whatever, but the Bose like I said makes anything sound like 3x better and CRUSHING as hell, no joke. Or pretty, depending on the song. Once I saw them at the Apple store I had to have them even though they were like $350 plus tax.
-Paul Barrett
For a few weeks a while back I was listening to Talking Heads almost exclusively, especially that album with all the Polaroids on it. My favorite song on there is “Artists Only” because of the kick-ass drum fill after the verse, plus the part where he says “You can’t see it till I’m finished” or whatever because that’s totally how I feel when I’m doing a painting or something, I don’t want anyone to see it until it’s totally finished. I’m super standoffish when I’m doing art. The breakdown with the rad organ part is pretty cool too, like almost at the end of the song right before he starts talking about how he knows he’s a good artist and he’s “creative” and everything and he doesn’t have to prove it by always constantly making great paintings and showing them off to people. In the song you know he’s talking about visual art like paintings and not musical art like the very song itself, because he says you can’t see it till he’s finished and if he was talking about a song he would have said you can’t hear it till it’s finished. Obviously musicians can also be painters and vice versa. In art school you learn how to be analytical about all things visual, and cautious of the media and commercialism. You learn how to paint and do performance art and stuff and some people like to talk about philosophy while smoking drugs. In art school a ton of people’s sentences begin like: “Clearly,” and consist of an opinion stated factually. It’s great. Art school is a great place to meet tons of unique people. In art school you learn that unique, as in the word, can’t be what’s called “modified” meaning you can’t say something is quote super unique or conversely quote kind of unique because, endquote, because unique means one-of-a-kind, as in uni- meaning one, and so something can’t be super one-of-a-kind or kind of one-of-a-kind, obviously. It is or it isn’t. My “Artists Only” theme party is either an ironic thing where I make my apartment into a fake gallery and put a ton of shit paintings on the wall and only serve wine and water crackers and everyone goes around and has half-clandestine half-ostentatious one-on-ones about each piece and says how Oh this one’s really unique or else I seriously only invite artists, like anyone I know who’s an artist and we just sit around. I’m almost positive someone picks up and casually strums the acoustic for a bit at some point during the night.
-Paul Barrett