o hand in hand

... is the three minute dose of mayhem that has been missing in my life for some time now. the song, called "new tappy is heard and beheld," is emblematic of why this album is totally great, and why this band gives me hope for howl-at-the-moon rock music as we know it. their earlier record, the golden river, was a big surprise for me at the beginning of the year (as noted on my other blog *scroll about three posts down*). the new record is similar, yet not "more of the same"-- the keyboards play a stronger role... the mix is more careful and experimental... there is great usage of echoing effects and occasional drum distortion. but essentially, it is still all about vocals that teeter on the edge of an epileptic fit and the band that gleefully keeps up with them. nowhere is that more present than on track ten, where the flamboyant bombast of an ian svenonius or a jon spencer is stripped to the bone of its irony, only to stand buck naked and blow out the candles at the nick cave birthday party. this song amounts to neither artful entropy nor nostalgia for a rockier era. it is sheer abandon with a beat to it-- viscerally immediate and almost illegible. it is frothing at the mouth-- spewing forth strange utterances ("little bird:fuck your bird:fucking bird") like an obscene phone call one might receive from antonin artaud or kathy acker. and somehow, its mania manages to dissolve into a chorus; what should be the "guitar meltdown" moment of the song rises upward instead. it ends on a pretty note, with a beach boys style sing-a-long carrying its flayed corpse off to some strange heaven.

music like this makes me want to rip my clothes off and light myself on fire. i wish i felt that way more often.