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December 09, 2004
Bait your hooks with paper worms
Fog - Pneumonia
This song is made of: lemon-scented Pledge, television static, used bath towels, and slate-gray clapboard shutters. Fog is Andrew Broder, from Minneapolis, and this is one of his best songs, by far. It's from his first album (self-titled) on Ninja Tune, which was filled to the brim with mostly turntable manipulations- with 'Pneumonia' being one of the only tracks that he actually lent his own vocals to. Broder's singing gets compared to Neil Young a lot, but he's also in the same range and nasal-style as, say, Doug Martsch from Built to Spill.
I first heard 'Pneumonia' in January, and it fits that month perfectly- the post-Christmas letdown and subsequent return to the working life, with the long, vacationless stretch of February and March looming ahead always makes January an excruciating time of the year, to say the least. 'Pneumonia', with Broder's (autobiographical) lyrics detailing his lengthy bout with the titular disease, has a cold and wet feel to it- the bass stays on the fringe, the beats are provided by Broder's unparalleled turntable-riding, and the acoustic guitar seems like it's being strummed with incredible effort, as if Broder was undergoing a particularly febrile period when he recorded the song.
One of the moments that make this song so punishingly gloomy and amazing comes at the very end, when Broder busts out a turntable solo- soulful as hell- that comes from a record he had of Korean folk instruments. In the same way that a sunbeam from a window will illuminate the swirling clouds of motes and dust, the jigsaw-whirring solo gives the listener the complete picture of how desperate and dirty the song really is.
You can buy 'Fog', his first LP, from Ninja Tune (at the aforeposted link), and the rest of Fog's stuff is available at his band site.
Posted by matt at December 9, 2004 08:00 AM