Back to the Lab

The Perfect Me
Deerhoof
Friend Opportunity
Kill Rock Stars : 2007
[Listen] [Buy]

Faberge Falls for Shuggie
of Montreal
Hissing Fauna are you the Destroyer?
Polyvynil : 2007
[Listen] [Buy]

We Were Born The Mutants Again With Leafling
of Montreal
Hissing Fauna are you the Destroyer?
Polyvynil : 2007
[Listen] [Buy]

The Past Is A Grotesque Animal
of Montreal
Hissing Fauna are you the Destroyer?
Polyvynil : 2007
[Listen] [Buy]

Labyrinthian Pomp
of Montreal
Hissing Fauna are you the Destroyer?
Polyvynil : 2007
[Listen] [Buy]

Free Radicals
The Flaming Lips
At War with the Mystics
Warner Bros. : 2006
[Listen] [Buy]

The W.A.N.D.
The Flaming Lips
At War with the Mystics
Warner Bros. : 2006
[Listen] [Buy]

Pompeii Am Gotterdammerung
The Flaming Lips
At War with the Mystics
Warner Bros. : 2006
[Listen] [Buy]

Good to be back in the coat, practicing the sweet science. It’s been a long week. The kind where each day feels like two. Going in early. Checking out late. Work doing its best to suck the gold right out of my soul. Good to the last drop.

Thank sweet spanky for damn good music.

I present to you two new releases, and one that’s just new to me.

Working from the bottom up, how about it, Flaming Lips, huh? Now I’m not saying I’m cool or anything. I first heard about you through a hand-me-down copy of Yoshimi that I popped in the tray one lazy summer day. What a listen! A concept tightly woven, executed with precision, resulting in intrigue, imagery, and fun. After that, I honestly didn’t have my hopes set high for the next Lips album. Nothing against the band, I just didn’t expect them to be able to follow it up. And in a way, they didn’t.

It’s clear on the first play that Yoshimi follows a concept from beginning to end. For me, that works two ways: whenever I hear a track from it, I have the urge to listen to the whole album, but I rarely get the urge to play any particular song from the album. Except, I guess, for Fight Test and One More Robot/Sympathy 3000-21. For At War with the Mystics, there is no central concept. (If there is, I’ve yet to tease it out during the course of a week’s listening.) What it does have is good songs a-plenty, which are excellent additions to anyone’s play list.

My favorite here is definitely Pompeii Am Götterdämmerung. (Good luck spelling that without the internet.) The sound is immediately striking, reminiscent of early Pink Floyd with a riffing baseline leading the way through the changes, providing a constant urgency that perfectly fits the theme of the song. Nothing groundbreaking. Nothing that hasn’t been done before. Just great lyrics, great sound, great changes, and overall, a tight, tight tune.

Moving on, the new of Montreal album wasn’t on my radar until my friend picked it up from a leak back in October. He didn’t know it hadn’t been released yet, and neither did I when I was about to post it up and down. It wasn’t until I tried to look it up on Amazon that I got a clue.

I’ve been sitting on these tracks like Horton for months. I think they’re plenty ready to share now. Warm too.

Like Yoshimi, Hissing Fauna are you the Destroyer? is recognizable as a concept album (or at least a themed album) on the first few plays. Unlike Yoshimi, I think many of the tracks will work well on their own, kicking around in shuffle, being catchy as hell out of context.

The subject of the album is its narrator, who’s relationship recently ended. As the album goes on, I’m slowly drawn into his world. A world very different from mine. A world where the narrator is openly flamboyant, catty, and spiteful, declaring in one song “There’s the girl that left me bitter/want to pay some other girl/to just walk up to her and hit her./But I can’t”. I picture him at the club with a group of friends, seeing his ex, and turning to his friends to whisper in his inability to deal with the situation directly.

The turning point of the disk comes with the long, cathartic The Past is a Grotesque Animal. Building on the same progression for almost 12 minutes, the narrator ruminates in what feels like a stream of conscious soliloquy, jumping from memory to memory, trying to figure out how he came to the state he’s in.

If The Past’s earnestness is the turning point, I’d submit that Labyrinthian Pomp would be the thematic climax, where the narrator struts his stuff to impress his ex, or maybe even just himself. Making claims about his supposedly incomparable style while showing off his new lady (who’s endorsed by the C.C.A.A. Booty Patrol – how do I sign up for that job?), he seeks to disarm his ex’s power, stating “let’s just say, you are not the destroyer.” Of course this method is doomed to failure, as the narrator doesn’t realize that her power over him originates in him, not her. All the grandstanding and schadenfreude in the world is less a method of combat than an admission of defeat.

The beautiful track We Were Born the Mutants Again With Leafling ends the CD with a sense of acceptance of resolution, though even looking up the lyrics I can’t tease out who he’s ended up accepting his situation with. Hell, just cause I wear a lab coat doesn’t mean I’m a genius. I could be wrong about this whole thing! Either way, most songs stand on their own while making more sense lyrically in context of the whole. The way a good concept album should be.

Finally, there’s Deerhoof. They’ve been around a long time, and critics love them. I caught wind while peeking in on other labs. As their new CD kicks off with this track, it was my introduction to the band. I have to be honest: if it weren’t for the complete and utter badassery of this track, I might not have accepted the singer’s voice.

But damn, this song. This song sold me. This song kicks me in sensitive places. This song drives my car into a tree and runs on foot from the police, looking good all the way. This song could run for president under the influence and almost won. I had a dream about this song. We were dancing. It whispered in my ear, then nibbled it a little. Then I woke up. It said “play me. Loud.”