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Rating: Were you right to burn the rock star?
A while ago, we talked about the Morphine, and I remember someone (jdv? where did you go?) mentioned Soul Coughing for a more stringent comparison.
Nonsense.
The Morphine could not exist without the night, just as the four from NY lived their listless restlessness in the daylight. Do I need to repeat once again the absolute uniqueness of this quartet within the already varied American landscape of twenty-five years ago? This is also why explaining their music remains a colossal task, so much so that they themselves invented a name for their genre (deepslacker jazz... slacker, the lazy one who doesn't want to work). Even the good Imasoulman had at the time some difficulty defining it. Be that as it may, “El Oso” – “the bear” that winks at us from the cover – is the band's third album, and I say this without fear of being contradicted, by far their best. Put on the headphones, I was listening to the first songs and it felt like it was recorded in a foundry. And that's the beauty of it: a bit like thinking of Kraftwerk's younger siblings, the Kling Klang moved by a not so accommodating moving company into the New York sewers. Rolling has a chainsaw instead of a bass, Misinformed and Houston pound on an anvil as persistently as a blacksmith, but one of those jittery and pissed-off ones.
The credit obviously goes to the fantastic and razor-sharp hyper-production of the trio Optical-Tchad Blake-Pat Dillett, tailors who sew half on the silhouette of a bony and very white post-’65 funk, and for the other half on the line that from krautrock goes directly to d’n’b, even citing the dark darkness that concealed the end of flower power – Doughty singing St. Louise is Listening is really scary eh! Needless to say, with such a context, Degli Antoni does both the good and the bad weather: his samples are practically insane, every second brings out a different and never before heard sound, and I challenge anyone to notice on the first listen the sonic expertise and the endless hidden details within these grooves.
But let's stop beating around the bush, do we want to talk about the heavy hitters then?? I’ve already mentioned a couple above, to be honest, even though it’s inevitable that the big single Circles – a scalene rectangle with Fa and Sol minor on its sides – is the benchmark and the diamond tip of songs that can even be whistled, or strummed in the room with our little guitar if we ever wanted to connect the amp to the entrance of the Fukushima plant. Then there are $300 and Monster Man which are nothing but wild car races launched at a thousand per hour on those high-speed tracks you see in movies, and Maybe I’ll Come Down, the dub ballad that Lee Perry would never have had the courage to write. Or further down the extreme sound expressionism of Fully Retractable, Pensacola, and I Miss the Girl. On the short, very short texts by Doughty, and their bewildered and mostly incomprehensible surrealism, it's almost pointless to dwell specifically; they’re simply there on purpose to imply much more than what is actually said.
A perfect album, which I fell in love with from the first listen, and practically unreproducible live: it’s not surprising that soon after, they would break up, unable to follow up on such kaleidoscopic magnificence. The recordings of some live performances released in the early 2000s, some excellent by the way, have in fact confirmed that, like for the Who with “Quadrophenia” at the time, the step was indeed longer than the leg. Despite the inspiration and technical competence – Steinberg and Gabay were the best double bass/snare drummer that a stateless group like SC could afford – the expressive urgency we find here was never fully transferred on stage. The classic state of grace that lasts the length of a season, and then fades away, ephemeral as it arrived.
Tracklist Lyrics and Videos
01 Rolling (03:36)
I'm rolling.........
I've gotta get a new balm
I've gotta get a tight tension on
I've got to slip it up before the rush gets gone
I've got to feel it with the hot mind on
I'm rolling
Hey Norman was it thrown with a broken arm?
Bottle it up, to keep it warm
I'm rolling
I know you got it but you got to go
I'm gonna get into the batter so the mix might glow
I hate to do it, but I did it though
I'm gonna bite into the body like the risk is no risk
I got the souped up car and what you call tripping on the boom bap
etymological
I ride the fader and I ride it low
I'm gonna slip into the field like Han Solo
I'm rolling
One two into the amplifier, the electrified two
Into the amplifier, and you got to get to
Into the amplifier, one two into the amplifier
I'm rolling
02 Misinformed (03:24)
His eyes go funny, you can't place why
All dolled up in bellhop drag
It is like a burden to the beat, to the long gone.
It is like a burden to the beat, to the long gone.
It is like a burden to the beat, to the long gone.
I was once misinformed about your intentions. (Repeat)
Were you right to burn the rock star? (rock star)
Were you right to drop the roster?
It is like a burden to the beat, to the long gone.
It is like a burden to the beat, to the long gone.
It is like a burden to the beat, to the long gone.
I was once misinformed about your intentions. (Repeat)
One dollar bill, one dollar bill...na na na na na na na na..to fade.
03 Circles (03:06)
When you were languishing in rooms I built to foul you in
And when the wind set down in funnel form and pulled you in
I don't need to walk around in circles
walk around in circles
walk around in circles
walk around in
dont need to walk around in circles
walk around in circles
walk around in circles
walk around in
When the ghostly dust of violence traces everything
And when the gas runs out just wreck it, you insured the thing
I don't need to walk around in circles
walk around in circles
walk around in circles
walk around in
dont need to walk around in circles
walk around in circles
walk around in circles
walk around in
doomp dah doomp dah doomp
doda doiada doi
But I can't sigh now that you made the move
It has gone and gone to dogs, lay down on the floor
For the right price I can get everything
Slip into the car, go driving to the farthest star
I don't need to walk around in circles
walk a..in circles
walk around in circles
walk around in
dont need to walk around in circles
walk around in circles
walk around in circles
walk around in
dont need to walk around in circles
walk around in circles
walk around in circles
walk around in...
04 Blame (05:00)
Blame is the cure, cure anything -- throw the rudder down, throw the rudder down...
Blame is the cure, cure anything -- throw the rudder down, throw the rudder down...
Broad latitude, broad latitude --- throw the rudder down, throw the rudder down...
Blame is the cure, cure anything -- throw the rudder down, throw the rudder down...
07 Houston (04:03)
I met a girl on roller skates
She had a spare bag, she had lost some weight
Where I used to work, she was a waitress
She proposed a trade, it was generous
She's gone to Houston,
Feel like I'm floating in a warm sea
And if she finds out when she comes back,
I know that she will leave me
Oh I heard a sign, it was a dull crack
It was a clock hand, it was snapping back
Oh it wasn't her's, it was the dope's kiss
I'll take the blame upon my shoulder,
I just love to feel like this
Roller Boogie, motherfucker
08 $300 (03:07)
Lifting me up like a garage door
I need to feel it when the drug starts coming on
I know you Lord are a jealous Lord
I know the tablet is your competition
And I need for you to be reasonable
(How much? She said for three hundred dollars I'll do it)
Beating me down just like a rain storm
I need to feel it when the rain starts coming on
I know the skin is a jealous skin
I know the sky it is its competition
And I need for you to be reasonable
(How much? She said for three hundred dollars I'll do it)
09 Fully Retractable (03:25)
Shooed out like a housefly
This house was half my mind
I don't dispute the doubts you've outlined
But it's my right to waste your time
And these things
It stands to reason
These things won't kill me
Your feelings
The spattering
It bores me
Don't tell me
Burned in on the 8th of May
She was spectacular
I walk a half-moon by the bus stop
Sliding 'cross the street to her
Three stings
Sequentially
Three strings
Won't kill me
Your spieling
Gracelessly
Is my grief
Please tell me
Half-masted, bass-boosted, slingbacked, fully retractable
Throw out the la-la by the busload
Match the photo to the description
I do indeed and shall continue
Dispatch the shiftless man to points beyond
14 The Incumbent (06:46)
New York, New York
I won't go back
Indelible reminder of the steel I lack
I gave you seven years
What did you give me back?
A jaw-grind, disposistion to a panic attack
On this side the incumbent
And who quoth
There's only one everything
Red sucker mouth
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