33 rebellions per minute
"Under construction as workers, hammers + saws inflict sound"
1997
Cheer-Accident, ENDURING THE AMERICAN DREAM
Something like the final product of setting the Communist Manifesto to
the tunes from the first 2 They Might Be Giants records, jetting the
results and a multitrack round-trip to the 19th century for Sergei
Rachmaninoff to record a version of, then giving his tapes to Faust
(with special guest-star Charles Ives) for extensive remixing.
The disadvantage of these comparson games is how useless they are if you
don't know the referents, so if that's you, well, this particular
Wayside Music" release has major-key left-wing revolution jingles
stretched on the rack into wondrously grandiose piano pieces and
interlaced with all kinds of weird strangely-tuned interrupting riffs,
drones, electronic jags, and other such eruptions. Occasionally Chee
r-Accident forget to redefine music in favor of ignoring musical
requirements altogether, but "Vacuum"'s buildup of interlocking drones
is a remarkable study in Krautrock construction (poor frequent-replay
value, but very worth hearing twice), and "Dismantling The Berlin
Waltz", an actual song and the Platonic ideal of the sound I've just
been describing, has joined my all-time favorite songs shortlist (but do
hit forward-skip when the closing siren kicks in, 6:20 through).
"The Law Of Attraction" is more Gastr Del Sol-like: unperiodic strums,
sounding like the bass notes of an autoharp with no key selected,
setting a thin high voice singing the oddly romantic "We collide at the
intersection/ I fly through the windshield into your arms/ we embrace/
the ambulance sirens/ as the sound of metal is cut away/ we display
intermingled remains". "Failure", on the other hand, plays half its
length as pop, like one of Ben Folds Five's serious numbers, before
evolving into the group sound and then into a peppy brass arrangement.
I've owned this album for 14 months as I write and it just now is
emerging among my most-played records of the moment. Some things take a
while to get past the "Huh?" stage.
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© 1997 bokonin@hotmail.com
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