33 rpm (Tripping Daisy)

33 rebellions per minute





1995

Tripping Daisy, I AM AN ELASTIC FIRECRACKER
Reviewing this comes with a special difficulty. FIRECRACKER was a somewhat successful album, entirely as a result of a superficially obnoxious alterna-hit "I Got A Girl"--- repetitive off-key vocals and too-cute lyrics--- which the band has loudly disowned, a single released only because the naive music-loving Texas hicks were manipulated by capitalist Hollywood slicksters. The problem comes in two parts:

  1. Actually, "I Got A Girl" is an impressive song. Lyrically, it's another rare entry in the Love Songs To Detectable People category, not necessarily a perfect entry (did I really to know she wears cool shoes, in the nude?), but overall sketching an intriguingly vain, argumentative, but fun girlfriend, and it's sweet in a good way despite the midsong tantrum. Musically, the hazy midtempo verses come with interesting transitions (play the following sequential chords yourself: G, A#, A, G#. Not normal!) to anthemic happy chorus in a different key, plus the aforementioned tantrum section. I bought FIRECRACKER because of this single.
  2. I got exactly the album I was hoping for. If they didn't want to be tagged as cute, they shouldn't call themselves "Tripping Daisy", and they shouldn't play like a sonic demonstration of the concept "chemical smile", and they shouldn't fill their album tracks with lyrics like "If all I had to do was get naked and look at you, and everything is great and everything is nice with H.R. Puffinstuff by our side, hey, hey!"
The overall sound suggests if MAGICAL MYSTERY TOUR had been recorded by plain-folk Texas hicks with a fondness for G-major and a spare copy of Nirvana's instructional album "play slow and quiet, then wham! go fast, lessons 1-4". There's impressive ear-catching details: the 5/4 groove and Indian drum of "Bang"; the booming percussion and slashing up-down up-down rhythm-guitar solo on "Pirhanas"; the soft-but-extreme vibrating sound on "Same Dress New Day" like a tuning fork mourning its beloved teacher Ethel Merman; how perfectly the weary decay from G to F to E to D illustrates "Motivation"'s "She said on the phone there was nothing to do, like a kid in the store with her fingers glued"; and how minor a transition it is from their normal psych-grunge moments to the perfect Black Sabbath imitation on "Noose". And most of all, it works because it's wrapped around the basics: tunes, dynamics, and the fact that no, Tim DeLaughter is not as bad a singer as he seems on the radio. Not even close.

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