I've been wrestling with my review of the Jesus Lizard's Liar for a while now. My difficulties with it have really helped me see the challenge in writing an album review so as to have a sort of narrative quality to it, flowing prose with a beginning, middle and end. I've been trying all sorts of little angles to get the juices flowing, and came up with this terse little piece I thought I'd share:
Recipe For a Jesus Lizard Song
1. Have rhythm section play absolutely punishing backing beat.
2. Have guitar player alternate between:
(a) chunky blues-based riffs, (b) post-punk chime/shimmer (c) all-out squalls of white noise.
3. Have vocalist:
(a) drink body weight in alcohol, (b) rant and rave on top of the whole glorious mess.
Intensely tongue-piercing-cheek irony or outrageously overreaching numb-to-taste delirium? I mean this cover so completely screams EXCESS!!! that it looks more and more earnest and sincere the more I look at it, in a "Hey! Let's capture all of the awesomeness of a thousand epic movie posters on a single album cover! AWESOME!" sort of way. See this video, where you can see those costumes from the cover in full motion (quick summary: two coked-out looking dudes mugging for the camera in Shanghai, China[?!?]), and this interview for further evidence on that question.
So I was surprised to find that the title track (Pitchfork's #96) of this album, which I was expecting to be some symphony-bursting, over-produced mess (the aural equivalent of the poster's blockbuster movie-fest I guess) is such a tight, tight, lovely, sighing little piece of 80's-derived pop music. In fact, it's the incredible leanness of the song that is one of the biggest factors contributing to its success. The thing simply sounds effortless.
Note the opening descending cloud-like synthesizer melody, the brief bursts of one-note vocals that open the verse melody, the insistent, yet understated chiming guitar that underpins the entire song and subtly shifts its pattern at appropriate moments.
"Walking on a Dream" sounds like the product of innumerable, ruthless editing sessions, like what emerges after attempting to take out as many extraneous sections as possible until what is left is as direct and succinct a pop song as possible. As they say, it takes a lot of work to make something look that effortless.
There's also something so winning to me about vocalist Luke Steele's performance, the way he petulantly open mouths some words ("how can i explain"), the little quirks of pronunciation he brings throughout the song.
One of my favorite moments is the mini-bridge, when the percussion drops out and a disembodied voice, sounding distant and scratchy, almost like a sample, sings "catch me I'm falling down", partially accompanied by another voice further up in the mix. It's a lovely little moment of semi-repose and wistfulness that provides a touch of emotional resonance in the midst of the song's coasting joy, and it exemplifies the subtle detail and craft all over this song, cheese-bomb cover and coked-out video be damned.
The end of the year means list-making time in the music world, and, out-of-touch with the Indie zeitgeist though I may be, I still doubt any site's list carries more weight than Pitchfork's (admittedly there's the Village Voice's Pazz and Jop and Idolator.com's Jackin' Pop, but both of those are aggregate lists, combining votes from hundreds of disparate music critics for a more mainstream picture). So it's interesting to check in with them at the end of the year and see exactly how things turned out in their view, what narratives they use to frame the year, and also which early heavily hyped juggernauts have run out of steam, which underdogs might sneak their way to the top (I remember Sufjan Stevens' Michigan coming out of nowhere to grab the #3 slot in 2003; he was a relative unknown at the time and it really helped kick-start his ascent to his current place in the mainstream Indie pantheon).
Their lists (especially the singles list) provide a broad and decently diverse (read: Indie-centric but dipping in dance, rap, pop, and metal) pool of music, and a great opportunity to discover some of the year's highlights that may have slipped under your own personal radar. I'll make a few posts with my own favorite discoveries from the lists. Here's one to start:
Women - "Black Rice"
This song caught my eye partly because its high rank (#17 overall) combined with its obscurity, and partly because it sat atop Pitchfork-founder Ryan Schreiber's own individual top tracks list. Superficially, the track stakes out the same sort of echo-ey garage-psych-postpunk territory Deerhunter so successfully inhabited on Cryptograms, but "Black Rice" finds hypnotic splendor not in rapturous overload (see, i.e., "Spring Hall Convert") but in shambolic, plodding warmth, bone-dry production, Panda Bear-like vocals (read: Beach Boys-derived), and an absurdly catchy, serpentine melody that I somehow feel justified in describing as "sideways". A truly dusty gem.
Quality Details: the deceptively intricate xylophone part that enters the song accomplanied by zombie handclaps on (what sounds like) the words "lemon and daylight"; the lovely cascading bassline that funnels the song back into its second verse; the sudden falsetto leap in the chorus that best exemplifies the melody's pleasantly queasy quality.
Surprise! Hello there. This semesters' exams are almost over and I can't believe my last post was back after my last set of exams. I'll start something up again on this after finals. I'll put up something, anything for consideration/dialog. See you there~
of the Jesus Lizard's Liar for a while now. My difficulties with it have really helped me see the challenge in writing an album review so as to have a sort of narrative quality to it, flowing prose with a beginning, middle and end. I've been trying all sorts of little angles to get the juices flowing, and came up with this terse little piece I thought I'd share:
