Get Ready for Some Stunted Prose
Swinging on the Midyear Mix Meme vines of, I guess, Matos (who I don’t know) and Anthony (who I do). A few older tracks that I’ve spent a lot of time with this year are included and asterisked. I am proud to say that I think many of my friends would call this mix overwhelming.
Right Brain: Raisin’ the Roof, Which Coincidentally, is Heaven:
1. “Rubies,” Destroyer (9:25)
2. “Can You Get to That,” Funkadelic (2:50)*
3. “Annie, Let’s Not Want,” Guillemots (4:43)
4. “Figure in Your Dreams,” Comus (3:11)*
5. “Quero Pensar (A Mulher de Bath),” Tom Zé (4:01)
6. “Province,” TV on the Radio (4:36)
7. “In a Gadda Da Vida,” Albert Kuvezin & Yat-Kha (3:50)
8. “Bulgarian Chicks,” Balkan Beat Box (5:59)
9. “Get It,” T.I. (3:40)
Destroyer proved his feast-or-famine presence by leading off Rubies with a 9-minute Wikipedia entry for, well, Destroyer. Weed out the casuals up front. Still, he confesses, “Please don’t wake me from this—my golden slumber—I am proud to be apart of this number,” peeling his teeth back to show the same mushmouth/throbbing heart combo that so tragically sparks “empathy” in the Human Being. He ascends in a haze of vibraphone and re-animated Pavement licks. Funkadelic fumbles with the keys to heaven for 10 seconds, which is fine, because apparently heaven is a place where, amidst much grooving the fuck out to steaming folk-funk, you have to have your earthly mistakes read to you by the voices of 100 diapered angels on acid. Todd Burns said that I was supposed to dislike the first 30 seconds of “Annie, Let’s Not Want,” but I was too preoccupied with stupid, open-mouthed bopping to hear him. Come to think, “Annie, Let’s Not Want” seems to hold the sacred, secret PBW Dance Key—a very dangerous item, given the fact that my routines usually combine old footage of the Twist, a child exploring its body for the first time, a palsied horse’s imitation of Duran Duran, and shook Jello.
After the great, foreboding First Utterance, Comus recorded To Keep From Crying, which painstakingly documents every wrong turn you could possibly take with overbearing prog-folk. Thankfully, they also made the mistake of putting on “Figure in Your Dreams,” four minutes of rapture sung by a woman who sounds like she loves being on fire. Also, there is a bassoon. This song started showing up on my computer’s anti-virus scans, such was the depth of my addiction.
Tom Zé could slay Mozart—maybe not Bach, but Mozart—in a competition of countermelody. He also tricks you into the idea that feeling like you’re covered in bugs is a good thing. “Province” is the soul-searing gospel power ballad that alternative rock has needed since Live’s “Lightning Crashes,” which is still garbage unless Robbie is singing it. Similarly, nobody has pulled off “In a Gadda Da Vida” like Kuvezin, who simultaneously maximizes the novelty potential of Tuvan throat singing and shames every cookie monster metal vocalist this side of Pluto. Most anticipated record of 200never: Balkan Beat Box split tour EP w/Gang Gang Dance covering “Hounds of Love” at a Turkish wedding in my fucking dreams. Of course, if I just wanted unremitting chaos, I could go for Swizz Beats’ “Get It” from the T.I. album; not even the Mannie Fresh “I’m in an expensive helicopter” feeling can top the collapsing building vibe.
(A Disturbing Interlude!)
10. “Pretty Ugly Husband,” Sway
11. “One Hit,” The Knife
12. “Rock Stepper,” Excepter
Sway and The Knife decided to make very very live songs about the half-dead condition of the abused woman. “Pretty Ugly Husband” doesn’t barrel, but it never stops moving; it’s constant collision, venom, and crossed wires. Obviously, I pick the Sway song with no discernable punch lines, in the traditional comedic sense of the phrase. The Knife’s domestic violence number out-Drifts Scott Walker with pitched-down horrorshow vocals and swallows Bjork, too, bones and all. Alternation by Excepter is the electro-pop zombie hymnal they’ve been hinting at over their last couple releases; Throbbing Gristle, meet Soul Jazz Records: let’s dance, I mean die. I mean dance.
Left Brain: You Can’t Spell Gloss Without Loss (aka PBW Still Dazzled by Near-Batshit White Women)
13. “My Name Is Love,” Amy Diamond (2:56)
14. “Teach Me Sweetheart,” The Fiery Furnaces (5:56)
15. “Out in the Streets,” The Shangri-Las (2:45)*
16. “Lonely Hearts Still Beat the Same,” The Research (2:37)
17. “I Love You,” The Pipettes (1:37)
“Out in the Streets” is a song I’ve adored for years now, but it was only recently that I started to really recognize the tandem extremes that made it work—a queasy blend of dispassionate performance and true vulnerability. Eleanor of the Fiery Furnaces has never sounded more sincere, but the scene is a dream; I’d just as soon guess her emotions are dipping out of some psilocybin-stained peak in her brain—imagining your in-laws as snakes and dogs trying to kill you, definitely a poorly planned trip—but “I’m alone, teach me sweetheart” is one of the most resonant, affecting lines I’ve heard sung all year. The Research sound like a synth-less Stereolab dying inside of a seafoam bubble, trying vainly to keep themselves alive with a single clever heart metaphor; I kid you not when I say that the first day I heard this song, I listened to it for four hours straight. Amy Diamond is 14 and doesn’t know what love is, except that it sells; oddly enough, this makes her much more convincing as love—the paradox of the Shangri-Las maximized as the glossiest gloss manages to make me swoon. Amy Diamond is sterile and inhuman enough to actually trust.
The Pipettes, who sort of disgust me, ended their album with the suckerpunch of “I Love You.” PBW TMI Story Corner: for a little while, I dated a very confused bitch; like the Pipettes, she seemed fun and sweet at first, but turned bewilderingly awful. One afternoon, just when I decided that it really wasn’t worth it, she turned her cold body towards me, said “I love you,” and started weeping uncontrollably. I didn’t believe her and I didn’t console her, but was overwhelmed by a strange kind of pity: maybe she really did mean it; maybe she was grasping frantically at something she didn’t really understand. One of the most unforgettable and alienating experiences I’ve ever had.