33 rebellions per minute
"Don't rush into the crowd"
1997
dEUS, IN A BAR, UNDER THE SEA
dEUS are a band of Belgian geniuses who, considerate like so many of
their European colleagues, cater to my Ugly Americanness as members of
the Rock En Ingles movement. Not that these lyrics, however intelligent,
are the essence of their appeal; while "Roses" is worthy of close
attention, the rest boil down to the agreeable propositions that being
betrayed is bad, being high occasionally is nice, the company of
simpatico people is nice, "God is a drunk in a rusty metal cage", and
sex will be nice if you'll hopefully co-operate. No, their gift is their
ability to turn off-the-cuff jam session ideas into finished songs that
still _sound_ off-the-cuff and lo-fi while revealing honest rehearsal
and care in the structure and layering of their compelling, ever-mutating grooves.
"Guilty Pleasure", for example, places rapid call-and-response vocals
around a very fast, tight violin/drums groove and layers highly melodic
feedback lines, some acoustic guitar, and more violin atop in catchy
fashion. "A Shocking Lack Thereof" evolves a strange waltz around what
seems to be banjo, tuned milk bottle, and the 3-note "the number you
have reached has been disconnected" cue. "Theme From Turnpike" runs many
instruments through a spy-movie/ Portishead feel, grounded by a tuba
imitating a mating bullfrog. On the other hand, the song that would be
the title track were it titled "In A Bar, Under The Sea" instead of
"Disappointed In The Sun" is their version of the showstopping finale,
as blatanly emotional as "Goodbye Yellow Brick Road" and only a bit less
over-the-top than The Muppet Movie's last version of "Rainbow
Connection"--- and yeah, it completely works. It's not the last, song,
though; "Roses", building from a simple acoustic guitar and overcoming
its indie rock confines, tops the sucker. _Then_ comes the last track, a
simply strummed wind-down.
For all the variety, though, the album feels unified, and there's an odd
sensibleness here, like a Julian Cope album in which the archdruid
traded his mysticism for a stack of Pavement LP's and a violinist who's
only off-key when he darn well should be. Oh, and dEUS vocalist Tom
Barman is a dead ringer for Robin the Frog, the 5-year-old nephew of
Kermit whose audible readiness for easy hope and easy hurt gave the
Muppet Show _the_ definitive version of "For What It's Worth". It works
just as well on the sparsely beautiful jangle-folk of "Little
Arithmetics" as it does on the organ/ distorto-guitar tantrum of "Little
Arithmetics", not to mention the jazz "Nine Threads". True, Barman gives
"A Shocking Lack Thereof" an It Came From The Swamp vibe that young
Robin, who did come from a swamp, couldn't have managed. But as we
already established, Tom's a genius, so he can do that stuff. And in
Belgium, dEUS tops the charts for it. Now if the rest of its citizens
would make English their daily habit too, I'd have a nice place to move
to. Gee....
1999
dEUS, THE IDEAL CRASH
I want to say that the largest change dEUS underwent in the two years after IN A BAR is that they became a dance band. They'd probably find the label puzzling, and fairly so. Of the ten songs on IDEAL CRASH, only "Everybody's Weird" is designed for club play, with synthetic two-chord bass and reverberating drum shuffle, whispered female vocal hook and a minor-key fanfare reminiscent of the Giorgio Moroder-composed chase sequence from Midnight Express. Even "…Weird" drops out the drum track for two bars to concentrate on the megaphone-distorted vocal, to remind us there's a song behind the beat. There's certainly no shortage of singing on the album generally, and "Put The Freaks In Front" has to stuff as many of its vocals into parenthetical counterpoint to fit a single's length as Alanis Morissette's "Front Row" did (with "…Freaks" winning music theory points for arranging genuine harmonies out of the clutter). There's more guitar than synthesizer, the drums sound real, and lots of songs have gentle introductions from drone ("Dream Sequence #1") to acoustic-guitar-with-cymbal waltz ("One Advice, Space").
Nonetheless, virtually the entire album is conducted to strong, mobile 4/4 beats, and that's new for dEUS. My first reaction, still valid, was disappointment. I love IN A BAR's careening unpredictability, dEUS's perfect willingness, track by track, to throw itself into whatever noises have caught its attention. I also see it as deceptively organized, or perhaps self-organizing, an album where momentum is injected when its jolt is most needed and then deflated before anyone gets too exhausted, an album with a near-model pace of intro and buildup and climax and denouement with just the right amount of subplots. Admittedly my fellow reviewer and occasional e-friend Jeffrey heard the album as the equivalent of hearing five completely unrelated CD's on shuffle play; one way or another, THE IDEAL CRASH is a concession to his view.
It's not that the ideas are any fewer or less varied. dEUS have always, even their shambolic WORST CASE SCENARIO debut, been about sewing a large number of ideas into each track's worth of tapestry, and standardizing and making more explicit the rhythm doesn't change that. Follow "Instant Street" from its folky banjo opening through transformations that incorporate castanets, pump organ, piano, Mellotron strings, an electro-drum break that's almost all echo, and a guitar which gets steadily more distorted until hitting on a riff which could become a fuzz-guitar equivalent of "Iron Man". At least six of the ten songs incorporate aggressively gnarled guitar, at least six use or real synthetic strings (it's tough to tell when the band's regular violinist isn't explicitly credited anywhere), at least five use Moogs or theremins in sci-fi-movie ways, at least six make notable use of acoustic guitars, and there's also horns, piano, flute, and (to open the album) an ear-splitting version of a test-tone. The combinations and mutations remain interesting. The layers are more sophisticated than before. The sound quality is better. It's just that none of the violin parts are abrasive this time - no "Suds And Soda" nails-on-blackboard riff, no racing "Guilty Pleasure" jitters - and none of the ideas that are used are liberated from The Beat. IDEAL CRASH is a more refined album, and more consistent. This includes, without doubt, the positive quality-control form of consistency, so I don't doubt it's deliberate and mature. dEUS have simply made less of an album - interlocked experiments racing along and holding each other up when they stumble - and more of a collection of songs in a (very interesting) style.
The songs are, I think, mostly excellent. dEUS aren't really melodists ("Let's See Who Goes Down First" excepted), but they connect little sing-song up-down melodies to each other via lots of key changes, which compensates. The lyrics, mostly by singer Tom Barman (who still sounds like Robin the Frog, bless him), are mostly about the breakup of a romantic relationship, and aim, the murder-ballad exercise "Sister Dew" aside, for analytical depth over instant clarity. Alanis is the obvious point of comparison, especially on a sudden passage like "…Advice"'s coda: "Thanks for anonymous invisible/ take us away/ thanks for not breaking like they wanted/ take us away/ Wake me and say 'take us away'" where her words might be flowing through his pen. Her advantage artistically is her willingness to use lines that don't rhyme. Her advantage commercially is her willingness to have at least some songs that commit to breakups without backtracking into a chorus of "Stay by my side, it's sexy, the way we talk about stuff" or "you're still one illusion that I can't resist"; or anyway promising to "send you some stuff and be good like you asked", or urging "put your panic on hold, amplify your very soul, and keep breathing". I like the ambivalence, which seems to come from both partners in the songs; I like the well-wishing. I like the avoidance of anthemic simplicity. And since IDEAL CRASH, danceable and adventurous and confused, is yet another Belgian best-seller, maybe I don't know jack about what is and isn't useful to its sales.
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