33 rebellions per minute
"I feel a bit like Spiderman; you know he got a little nervous, too"
1999
Veal, TILT O'WHIRL
So apparently TILT O'WHIRL, the 2nd album by Vancouver trio Veal, is Mia Sheard's favorite album, or was when she mentioned it to me a couple months back. That's a reason to buy it (from A + B Sound). Normally I wouldn't think the adjective "cowpunk" was a promising sign for a record, but then, normally the person using it didn't record REPTILIAN, an unusually slow and graceful album, earlier this year. Or, for that matter, guest on Swinghammer's beautifully space-prog concept album VOSTOK 6 and on the Rheostatics' amiably perverse children's album THE STORY OF HARMELODIA. And indeed, while "cowpunk" could in fact be a reasonable term for Veal -- and so could "funny" -- the songs, as produced by the great Michael-Philip Wojewoda, are sufficiently dense, dark, and layered that the humor and energy slide into a listener's consciousness gently, over several listens, rather than dominating the CD's usefulness.
"Spiderman", for example, starts with 15 seconds of what may be my favorite album-opening feedback strafing of all time (see also the Loud Family's "Sodium Laureth Sulfate" and the Butchies' uncompromising "Insult To Injury"). The jazzy bass and snare that break in are in 6/4, and the entire song is conducted over phasing effects, labored bass chords, and the eloquent screeches of guitars simulating pain by method acting. It takes time to notice that the song itself could pass for the Refreshments in a deeply disgusted mood, with humor leaking into the account of a junkie who promises to "never shoot again, if you give me 20 bucks", and the narrator's claim to resemble Spiderman on the sole grounds that "he gets a little nervous too". It takes even more time to notice that the tale is of the narrator's own regrets at not being strong enough to help a drug addict friend in need ("I'll never shoot again, if you tell me that you love me", goes promise number two), and how the fact of her apparent recovery, without him, actually deepens the self-contempt; by which time the song suddenly becomes what Lou Reed's BERLIN might've if Lou could've skipped the cheap glamorization and learned to put more sing in his sing-speak. I don't usually like music to take me on a Walk On The Wild Side, but that's because I usually can't stand the people I'm asked to meet there.
"Skid" is a jaunty guitar song, definitely in Refreshments mode, but the whistly synth, thickness of sound, and wobbly weird-chord bridge delay the impact of the nerd's-revenge tale, which goes from "I'm a pacifist at heart/ besides, he looked like he had a lot of friends" to a vow to, one glorious day, smash the bastard's cell phone. "Peroxide" goes from the tense evasiveness and thin near-falsetto of Dismemberment Plan or Shudder To Think to an eight-cord Gin Blossoms, hiding what would be a jokey childish vendetta, competition unrecognized by the other competitor (but not hiding the goofy strained exact rhyme: "You look nothing like you do in photograph/ now you're drunk, the lines are blurred, no one can hear your stupid laugh"). "Harold's End" stretches a short Palace-style country song into 5:46 of ambient twitter, creepy bass riffs, and abrupt time-signature-switching drums. I'm pretty sure, though, that when I ignore the music long enough to figure out _what_ "reminds {the narrator} of a car crash in Siberia", I'll be amused. And then later, when I'm not amused anymore, I'll still want to hear the song often, because I already do.
It's not clear to me how much I'm enjoying Veal when I'm enjoying TILT O'WHIRL. Luke Doucet's vocals combine Stephen Malkmus (Pavement)'s giddy approximateness, a bit of Craig Wedren (Shudder To Think)'s operatic purity, and a plainspoken forcefulness; that's a good thing. Chang, the drummer, plays slowly but emphatically, and is agile about abrupt direction shifts. The creepy organ on, say, "Happy As Pye", that's clearly Wojewoda, who's listed as playing it. TILT is a guitar-rock album, though, and one based less on the (definitely quite forceful) playing than on the multitude of clever ways that its sound is processed, and sprayed across the sonic spectrum.
I don't know who is most responsible for taking lyrics and melodies that might've supported a Meat Puppets casualness or even (see "Buttercloud") pure country lullaby, and bending them into an album that often (see "Pinkos") approaches the intense sensual unease of Miranda Sex Garden, if they were to use the Wrens' ingredients. Even the strummed "Monkey Tree", goofily aggressive, puts some blasted cathedral distortion on the vocals before it ends. On the other hand, I'd still like Veal, in a different way, if they stopped the indirection. So next time they produce without Wojewoda, I guess I'll buy that album too, and find out.
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