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December 02, 2006
a curlicued sense of history [updated]
So you can probably forget everything I said last month about the Blood Brothers' "Young Machetes". A few days after writing that initial post, I realized how deeply and ridiculously wrong I was about the album- which may now end up being my favorite release of '06.
When I said that "Young Machetes" was an album I was merely going to 'get used to', I meant it in the most pejorative sense possible- that it was just a collection of songs that I would, over time, learn to tolerate, but never fully enjoy (i.e. that, unlike "Crimes" which seemed to only really open up after like 10 or 11 listens, "Young Machetes" would never reward any sort of listening efforts, but would instead remain inscrutable, flatly abrasive, totally nonporous, etc.). I probably listened to "Young Machetes" for a week and a half straight before I actually got it; 'Giant Swan' was at least partly responsible for my change of heart. It's (maybe) the best single song that the band has written.
'Giant Swan' not only achieves a nice synthesis between the noisy/hard aspects of the band and their more adventurous tendencies, but it also features some heartbreakingly gorgeous lyrics- and that's what really got me. The closest touchstone I can some up with is probably Delmore Schwartz's (unbearably sad and beautiful) short story "In Dreams Begin Responsibilities"- 'Giant Swan' is framed in a similar way, with the narrator watching a play about his own life, and the whole song is seeping this sort of weird regret and shame (it's almost like embarrassment at being/having been alive), which the Blood Brothers explore with their customarily grisly enthusiasm. E.g.: "all the girls you wished you'd fucked make a guest appearance", "your mouth is cheap and your hair is shoddy", "strip down to your vulgar skeleton", "a pound of cocaine under the bed where the call girls perform their services". And then there are other phrases, oddly affecting, that take a different tack entirely: "if your heart's a diamond, what's the fucking price?", "the sun's like a painting of your whole life/you scratch at the canvas, but you can't get inside", and towards the end of the song, the devastating "all the things you wished you'd said are buried with your X'ed out head" (the band is very good at getting at the kernel of things that are unpleasant or uncomfortable).
Musically, 'Giant Swan' is reminiscent of the "Crimes" B-side 'Metronomes', with a kind of slinking, vampy mood dominating the beginning of the song (that bass is perfect). Johnny Whitney's vocal performance is what makes the track though- he coos, screams, croons, gasps, shades each word with a hundred different tics and quavers. Oh, and that breakdown- 3 minutes in, there's a minute of anguished, twisted, wrought music that's more exhilarating than anything I've heard in a while. "Young Machetes" is full of moments like the ones in 'Giant Swan', where the band switches from gruesome to poetic imagery, often in the space of a syllable or two, and manages to make abrasively melodic, sandpapery, catchy songs.
You can buy "Young Machetes" here.
p.s. Exciting news- a band (Racecar) that I thought was gone for good is back (much more on that later), and the lost Impossible/Slowreader, Gabe Hascall, is alive and well and has a website with 4 brand new (pretty fucking awesome) songs up (please please at the very least check out 'Absolutely', Gabe sings like a somewhat lighter-voiced Elliott Smith, and it's a v. pretty song all around). (Thanks to Nicki for the heads-up).
Posted by Kevin at December 2, 2006 03:01 AM
Comments
i am slightly obsessed with this song.
Posted by: L at January 8, 2007 10:37 PM