33 rebellions per minute
"All the Halloweens you can hold are here forever"
1995
Rebecca Moore, ADMIRAL CHARCOAL'S SONG
I'm going to explain this album indirectly by first mentioning a somewhat less obscure 1995 album, Scott
Walker's TILT. Since I acquired the album on the basis of a review by one glenn mcdonald, I'll refer you to his TILT review now, because it has the funniest series of
metaphors I've read since whenever I might've read a funnier one. It is not a helpful review, mind you; it
posits Scott as too imaginative and weird to comprehend, while repeated listens to TILT keep giving me the
same simple mental picture: of a champion Gregorian monk singer trying to sing solemn jazzy nightclub
songs, randomly losing 3/4 of his own lyrics by divine hostile intervention in his word-processor storage,
and assuming he can compensate by singing the remaining fragments at 1/4 speed and sounding mellow,
when in fact he sounds like a person about to go comatose from sleeplessness, trying earnestly to have a
panic attack. Sure, it's fascinating, quite worth hearing, especially when he tries Trent Reznor-like electronic
backgrounds on "the Cockfighter" and "Bouncer See Bouncer", but within three songs he's invented the
genre, perfected it, and left so little room for further development that the rest is self-derivative.
Still, I want to use glenn's notion that TILT is an import from a planet where this is what passes for top
40. Because on that same planet, Rebecca Moore must be Joan Baez. Moore certainly seems to have all the
amiable goodwill necessary for the task: from two cutesy between-song stagings and a giddily awful shanty
duet before "Twistig Lullaby", through the quick helpful one-sentence scene-setting before a couple of
songs on the lyric sheet, to the liner notes giving shout-outs to an enviable number of friends ("I love you
guys terribly") and the adorable dedication to "my father, Peter Innisfree Moore: Magician, Scientist, big
Dreamboat". And on a planet where no-one would be so boring as to sing to the chromatic scale, or tune
their guitar, and where singing in a heavy voice alternating "worn out" with "worried" is the fluff way to be,
one wouldn't have to ask why this nice person is designing music to clear rooms with (well, to clear one
side of large rooms; it _is_ quiet). It really does sound like a folkie TILT, and "the Lamp Shop",
"Darkroom", and "Cripple Kingdom" even show the same electronics facility. The dark lyrics don't dispel
the image either, showing a folksinger verbosity and poesy that nonetheless yield very Walker-like lines:
"You think you're so clever you could fool the sun. But I won't tell, all 5 of me won't tell. Smashing wet
ring on the counter where the mean drink stood. I could say here all night". Or just a similar impenetrability,
like the first chorus: "And now I know in the Roo-/ I could not be over myself I'm over this Hell and would
not answer for a while".
But I like this album, or I'd ignore it. Her voice may be traditionally awful singer-wise, but it grades well
by either the Hypnostist or Storyteller scales. The arrangements are clever and tense, the melodies do exist
in their internally coherent way. I had a harder-than-expected time picking an "impenetrable" lyric because I
kept realizing, no, "You can see the doll tilt its head a bit right and act real knowing. It's still encased in
see-through arms, it still relives being kicked around the yard" makes intriguing sense, and that I'm awfully
darn impressed by "If your candle's burning low, or your glasses growing thickly, and your pallor's
turning sickly--- how about a lamp? To illuminate the tiny cracks, something about a hand you couldn't see
before, or to keep your shadow falling to whenever. In the glow you could be something else for a change,
as the bulb swings perilously close to your head". My favorite lines remain the ones that, in and of
themselves, caused me to order the album: "Beware the Mighty Forks of Despair! Dragging their tines
across my spine. Beware the Mighty Spoons shaking their caved-in heads. They are old. They are
h-h-handed down. They are worn from day to day". I realize you can capture 2/3 of that sentiment growling
"People try to put us down just because we get around". But no-one round her parts listens to _that_
avant-garde crap anyway.
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