33 rebellions per minute
"He says I live in the '70's, and I can be replaced"
1990
Trip Shakespeare, ACROSS THE UNIVERSE
Rarely has an album caused me to laugh out loud as often as ACROSS THE UNIVERSE did, the first time I heard it this summer. I don't think that was the intended reaction; I don't really know. It started with the third song, "It's Coming Down", something like a half-speed hymnal version of the Cleaners From Venus's cheeky "I Was A Teenage Idiot Dancer", only interrupted regularly by announcements like "Mrs. Braintree, you're a chilly Northern woman/ go home from yonder bus stop, there's a blessing on the ground". "Drummer Like Me" then provides unobtrustive piano and pedal steel accompaniment as Matt Wilson, a clear boyish-voiced alto, earnestly informs his would-be mate "In the days when I had a job, I made pretty good pay", and controversially asserts "I could be a professional/ that's a living to me". "Gone, Gone, Gone", ringing heartland 4-chords soft rock like latter-day Soul Asylum without the gravel-voiced skepticism, cheerfully tells an ex-lover "I see you've brought a new friend to {their old hangout}/ that's only natural, your mind is gone". But "the Slacks" probably _is_ supposed to be ridiculous: before equipping those chords with brass knuckles and booming kick-drums, it sets up its nervous white college-boy version of rap-music sexual bravado contests with heavenly a capella harmonizing "about a one-eyed lady in France/ I guess the king declared all the various princes/ should try to get into her pants". At any rate, it clears up the bizarrest band impulses, and the remaining five songs stretch for poetic effect with no worse (or better) effect that a slight loss of balance-- although, if you're still in the mood to giggle, you'll find your chances somewhere.
Fact is, I meant that paragraph as a compliment. Trip Shakespeare's main lyrical concerns (as penned by Matt Wilson) were fairly ordinary ones: love, getting laid, being poor; the same sorts of concerns Matt's brother Dan would display as the leader of Semisonic and make far more money with. Semisonic succeed by being predictable: square beats, repeated choruses, the reasonable bridge at the right time, lyrics easily enough understood. At best, Semisonic illustrate the virtues that long ago made original, creative ideas popular enough to become cliches: their hit single "Closing Time" turned four chords, simple piano, nice singing, romantic yearning, and middlebrow profundity ("Every new beginning is another new beginning's end") into an entry on my Best Songs of 1998 list, while the same album's "Singing In My Sleep" was magical to several people whose taste and knowledge I greatly respect (perhaps for being about falling in love with a girl because of the mixtape she'd made, a novel topic about which Dan, to my flawed ears, had nothing to actually say). But at album length, I quickly found the predictabilty numbing; I can't see why I wouldn't.
Whereas Trip Shakespeare were fun. Trip Shakespeare reached consistently beyond their known abilities, creating absurdity and novelty and occasional magic. They were a pop band, certainly, jangly and friendly, like the Gin Blossoms but with slightly off-kilter rhythms, early-Beatle chord changes, and high-pitched harmonies from Queen's A NIGHT AT THE YOUTH CHOIR. "Turtledove" syncopates like Garbage's cover of Big Star's "Thirteen" and makes like an oratorio on the chorus. "The Nail" has several instrumental parts in disagreement about where the beat is supposed to fall. "The Crane" rushes through too many lyrics without spoiling anyone's perfect pitch. Such is the range. It's a million miles from radical, but it's enough to keep the band itself a little bit confused and challenged. It's plenty.
An aside: it's accepted wisdom, apparently true, that people tend to fixate on the music popular in their late teens or early twenties and forever regard those songs with unique fondness, on the grounds that those songs remind them of happy and life-shaking times. Cool. How does that work? ACROSS, because it comes in its container with name and title attached, does have nostalgia value for me. Back in '91-92 I listened to it several times, always in the company of my friend/ girlfriend Jenny, who was bright and funny and kind and beautiful and two years older than me, which meant that when around her my emotions were a hopeless mix of happiness, love, and sublimated terror-- exactly the sort of thing I should be associating music with. Well: if I'd heard ACROSS unlabeled this year, or even in '94, I'd never even have guessed I already knew these songs. Why? Because I was way too busy with the happiness, love, and sublimated terror to be memorizing some #@$% tune. Seriously, if some crucial romantic moment of my life were to occur to Alice Donut's "My Severed Head", would the song become one I swoon to? I guess it's supposed to. But any explanation why would be welcome. Thanks.
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