Marilyn Manson: Antichrist Superstar
This album scared me when I first heard it. The theme is basically the apocalypse brought about by a creature, the Antichrist, who started life as a Worm and then evolved into this terribly charismatic thing that destroys the world because he considers us all dead. The music is so intense and hate filled that while listening to it as I walk through the streets of New York can result in me slamming into people just because I know they can’t do shit. Regularly I wouldn’t do that, but the tone and feel of this album really alters something in me.
This album has 16 songs and it broken into three cycles: The Hierophant, Inauguration of the Worm and Disintegrator Rising. Each of these tells the story of the worm who got its wings and became the Antichrist (or the Disintegrator or the Angel with The Scabbed Wings). The first cycle sets the tone while the second cycle involves the actual transformation of the worm into the angel and the third cycle is about the future and the end of everything.
The album begins with a cracked voice (the voice of the ruler of the world, the Antichrist) saying “when you are suffering, know that I have betrayed you” And then, we hear his voice inciting a multitude to chant “We hate love, we love hate” until the songs explodes with such lyrics as “Hey victim, should I black your eyes again?”, “I hate the hater, I rape the raper”, “Everybody’s someone else’s nigger, I know you are, so am I.” The album goes on from there, laced with malice, contempt, violence, and just about everything negative one can express in a 70 minute time period. The title track is a fist-pumping anthem to bring about the eschaton simply by people willing it to occur. The track “1996” I feel is one of the most violent in which the Antichrist declares exactly what he is and that we deserve all of this: Anti people now you’ve gone too far, here’s your Antichrist Superstar.” The last song on the album, “Man That You Fear” addresses the fact that this creature that the world worships and fear used to be the boy (worm) who was abused and unsure of himself. The song opens with the line “the ants are in the sugar, the muscles atrophied.” Chaos and ruin abound and things are nearing the end. It also explains why he is ending the world: I have it all and I have no choice but to/I’ll make everyone pay and you will see/you can kill yourself now because you’re dead in my mind/. He gets his revenge and as the song and world end many voices are heard repeating when all of your wishes are granted, many of your dreams will be destroyed”. That brings about the close of the album. But right before the very end of the CD is a strange vocal track in which we discover that in all the nothingness left behind, the Disintegrator himself feels something cold grow in his chest resulting in his eventual death.
I should mention that with the production values of the post-Downward Spiral Trent Reznor, this album might have been as great lyrically, but not nearly as amazing musically. The difference between a Rhodes piano and a Mellodrone? Reznor. The different between a loud, crashing guitar and a think, grinding world-ending guitar? Reznor. The difference between a song on the album having 10 tracks (one for vocals, one for back-up vocals, one for drums etc) and one have 15 tracks? Reznor. This album might have been good without him, but I’m happy we’ll never know.
They Might Be Giants: Factory Showroom
This was the first TMBG CD that I bought. First of many, but it was their most recent album at the time of the purchase and it was great. The album starts with what became my theme song for a while, “S~E~X~X~Y”. On top, this song is about being too sexy to handle, but the deeper meaning is quite a bit different. As we ALL know, anyone who has a chromosome with XXY rather than the typical XY is a freak and has both male and female biological traits. The lyric: “S-E-X-X-Y, more than enough” indicates that one is too sexy, but also that there are more than enough “X” chromosomes. Then the lines “Cookie in one hand, wig on her head” (a man who is a woman) and “she’s got another plane, she wants to be your man” cinch the notion. Just to clarify, the song was my theme for its swing, funk rhythm, not because I am a hermaphrodite. I will show you all my cocknballs if you don’t believe me. Then there’s “Til My Head Falls Off”, a first person account of living to a ripe old age riddled with amnesia. Then, “How Can I Sing Like A Girl?”, a song about how once in concert Flansburgh sang a song in falsetto to recreate the speed up, higher vocals on a song. Next, “Exquisite Dead Guy”, which is based on the existential literary parlor game “The Exquisite Corpse” and which features the lyrics, “Exquisite dead guy, outside my high-rise apartment, exquisite dead guy, hanging from a sky hook”. There’s “Metal Detector” a song based on a book written by a madman. Then “New York City”, a song done originally by a Canadian band call Cub that TMBG made their own and besides, what are the Canadians going to do? This song was even more important to me because at the moment it was introduced to me, I had acclimated myself to Florida, but still had the need to return to New York, so this song hit the spot. Other gems include “Spiraling Shape” about how dangerous and destructive drugs are, but without being preachy and it was also in Brain Candy, making it immensely much cooler, “James K. Polk, a beautiful telling song about the 11th President of the USA, “XTC Vs. Adam Ant” a song about just that, “I Can Hear You” a song whose concept is being that its finished product, but interesting nonetheless and finally “The Bells Are Ringing” a song addressing mass hypnosis by the tintinnabulations of ringing bells. This is one of their most clever albums to date and it rocks, all the way. Beatle-based pop combined with off-beat, sometimes depressing or dark lyrics. Perfect ingredients for fun and music.
They Might Be Giants: John Henry
The first album on which they used a live band (drums, bass, guitar, horns etc) and not just a sampler or MIDI generator. This added such a new depth to their music and ended up shaping them for the future. After ten years of just the two Johns, they could have gone on producing great music with just the two of them (keyboards, guitar and accordion), but their decision opened up a whole new dynamic for them. The album had a new sound with the same old excellent lyrical quality. The album contains such tracks as “Meet James Ensor”, a song about the greatness of the late Belgian painter, “No One Knows My Plan” which has an infectious conga beat that makes it impossible for the listener not to “bust a move” as they say, “I Should Be Allowed to Think” which features a quote from Ginsberg’s Howl part 2 (I saw the best minds of my generation destroying by madness, starving, hysterical), “Dirtbike” which is about a cult leader, which just happens to be a dirt bike, brainwashing people with its evil charisma, “Sleeping in the Flowers” which is an amazingly arranged song based on a song based on drugs. All the tracks are great. Their horn addiction started with this album and since its release in 1994, horns have been an integral part of some of their best work, and their live shows. This album is a landmark. They Might Be Giants’ transition from one form to another.
Beck: Midnite Vultures
This is the goddamnest funkiest album I own and Beck Hansen is the goddamndest funkiest white man in existence. This album can be described as such: having intercourse with a malfunctioning drum machine. From the first note is “Sexx Laws” to the last note in “Debra” the album makes you want to shake your ass and talk jive-ass nonsense. These songs deal with and satirize sex, love, gangstas and more. The opening tracks “Sexx Laws” nuts into your ear with a brash horn riff, funky guitar and dope drum beat, to coin a phrase. Then in the middle of this techno dance fuck, there is a banjo solo. The banjo is joined by a slide guitar (that twangy country sounding thing). The lone banjo and guitar are joined by the aforementioned funk guitar, brash horns and the song becomes Tetris. INTERFUCKINGLOCKING baby. You wonder how you could even hear this song without the banjo. Any artist that can make a banjo sound cool deserves cake. Then “Nicotine and Gravy” (a song titled inspired when I chain-smoking friend of Beck’s came over for Thanksgiving, became drunk, vomited and passed out. The next day this friend asked what happened. Beck told them they vomited…nicotine and gravy. Despite the title, this is one of the sexier songs, including the lyrics:
I'll feed you fruit that don't exist
I'll leave graffiti
Where you've never been kissed
I'll do your laundry
Massage your soul
I'll turn you over
To the highway patrol
I know it doesn’t SOUND sexy, but once you’ve heard the porn groove of N&G and his sex-thickened voice mumbling that line…you just get wet. Then there’s Mixed Bizness. Oooooh, taste the electro-funk. Every word and note of this is pure funk. In fact, you need a funk towel to clean up afterwards.
I'm mixing business with leather
Christmas with Heather
Freaks flock together
And make all the b-boys scream
Word up to the man-thing
She's always cold lamping
Visine at the canteen
I just wanna watch you dance
Do you wanna ride on the Baltic Sea
I'll be your mistress C.O.D.
I'll comb your hair
Rewrite your diary
Pour champagne on a honey bee
She can really do me
She can look right through me
And make all the b-boys scream
I'm mixing fitness with leather
Homework with Heather
Freaks flock together
And make all the lesbians scream
JESUS FUCK HE IS FUNK EMBODIED. Then there’s his parody of those “hard ass gansta niggas” who rap about bling and spitooy and dink and winkle and all those silly African-American make up words. This song, “Hollywood Freaks” has a phat gangsta beat that would sound tired with any other vocals over it but Beck’s lyrics and vocal tone actually bring life to it. This song brings me to Beck’s use and feeling on lyrics. He said in an interview that his lyrics are as important as they are unimportant. Well…he’s a weird guy. But check this fucking lyrics out:
Hot milk
Mmmm... tweak my nipple
Champagne and ripple
Shamans go cripple
My sales go triple
We drop lobotomy beats
Evaporated meats
On hi-tech street
We go solo
Dance floors and talk shows
Hot dogs, No Doz
Hot sex in back rows
I wanna know what makes you scream
Be your twenty million dollar fantasy
Treat you real good
Expensive jeans
Hollywood freaks on the Hollywood scene
Touch it real good if you want a piece
Party people know I'm that type of freak
People look so snooty
Take pills make them moody
Automatic bzooty
Zero to tutti fruitti
Sex in the halls
Niagra Falls
Local shopping malls receive
Anonymous calls
Hot like a cheetah
Neon mamacita
Eat at tacoria
Pop lockin' beats from Korea
Looking like jail bait
Selling lots of real estate
Looking like a hot date
Banging like an 808
Do you want to feel this?
Do you want to feel this?
Norman Schwartzkoff
Something tells me you want to go home
Champagne, bibles
Custom clothes you own
Calling up from special area codes
Hollywood nuns with the Hollywood phones
I got nothing to do, nowhere to go
I'll tell you what you want
If you want to know
Satin sheets
Tropical oils
Turn up the heat
Till the swimming pool boils
Let all the neighbors
Read it in the papers
Making all those gentlemen cry
Realistic tears
Jockin' my Mercedes
Probably have my baby
Shop at Old Navy
He wish he was a lady
No, they don’t really make sense, but that’s kind of the point of this song. Throughout this track, Beck is yelling a lot of these lyrics as if he’s bragging and showing off. Then he’ll say a few of them in a lower register, sounding sultry. He is doing what all this Puff Daddy’s are doing, bragging about stupid shit and promising equally stupid shit. That’s why this guy is the shit. Because he insults P. Diddy Poo. Among some of the other funkier stand out lyrics are:
Sexx Laws:
Can't you hear those cavalry drums
Hijacking your equilibrium
Midnight hags in the mausoleum
Where the pixilated doctors moan
Carnivores in the Kowloon night
Breathing freon by the candlelight
Coquettes bitch slap you so polite
Till you thank them
For the tea and sympathy
Neptune's lips taste like fermented wine
Perfumed blokes on the Ginza line
Running buck wild like a concubine
Who's mother never held her hand
Brief encounters in Mercedes Benz
Wearing hepatitis contact lens
Bed and breakfast getaway weekends
With Sports Illustrated moms
Peach and Cream:
Don't tell your right hand baby
What your left hand do
You know those road check girls
Will make your brown breath blue
You look good in that sweater
And that aluminum crutch
I'm gonna let you down easy
I've got a delicate touch
You're a torn out page
From a best selling book
Your home girl's on the line
But your daddy's off the hook
Where do we go now?
Give those pious soldiers
Another lollipop
Cause we're on the good ship
Menage et tois
Peaches and cream
You make a garbage man scream
Such a delicate thing
Keep your lamplight trimmed and burning
Anyway, sorry I’m just listing lyrics since the lyrics are just words without the music. My favorite track on the album is “Milk and Honey”. It’s well written and well orchestrated and well funky. The last track is called “Debra” and is the story of a guy meeting a girl named Jenny at a JC Penny and then saying “I wanna get with you, only you, and your sister, I think her name’s Debra”. The super funkiest sleaze track I’ve ever heard. This is the album I listen to when good things happen to me. I get a booking, I listen to this album, it’s the first warm day after a series of rainy nasty cold days, I listen to this album, and walking around this city to the beat of these songs, you feel like Funkor, the ancient God of Funk and Kudzu.
Beck: Sea Change
The first amazing thing about this album is that it came right after Midnite Vultures. Whereas MV was having intercourse with a malfunctioning drum machine, Sea Change is best described as a long, slow drive through the Mojave (thank you Phil). The type of music can come off and simple and a bit country at first, but if you listen closely, you can feel more behind it. Electro-folk is how I described it once. You hear a lonely acoustic guitar note that turns into a computer error buzz. Thick, warm keyboards engulfed in metallic whirs and bleeps. The soundscape is so expressive of the cold, desolate nature of the music that you can actual get chills listening to it. The first song is called “The Golden Age” which connotates good things, the peak of a society is called its Golden Age, but the first line is “put your hands on the wheel as the Golden Age begins”. This immediately instills the image of a man running from society and perfection. Wandering. “You have to drive all night, just to feel like you’re ok”. You can’t be in one place too long without being uncomfortable. Unsettling way to start an album. After hearing the song, you can taste the bitterness with which “golden age” is spoken. The next song introduces David Campbell’s work on the album. David Campbell has worked as a conductor, composer and arranger for over 200 gold and platinum albums, 80 hit singles and has worked on albums which received 111 Grammy nominations, 26 Grammy awards and 3 Oscars. He is also Beck father. His work on Sea Change is his most amazing to date. On this album he does all the strings. Most of the tracks on this album are augmented or created by Campbell’s powerful, emotional string work. The line from the second track “Paper Tiger” “All the deserts down below us, and the storms up above, like a stray dog gone defective, like a paper tiger in the sun” might or might not be anything on its own, but with the driving, swooping strings behind it, you can see these images Beck presents as clear as day. Campbell’s strings turn a sad line into a crushing sentiment, a happy line into triumphant moment, etc. The next song, “Guess I’m Doin’ Fine” is about how Beck now has time to do what he wants, when he want since a relationship recently ended. He is still broken about this parting and is doing his best to look on the bright side, but the light isn’t bright enough to counteract the remaining dark. He tries to be happy and put up a good front, but he’s still affected. The chorus is a mix of emotions and ideas from Beck. “It’s only lies that I’m livin’, it’s only tears that I’m cryin’, it’s only you that I’m losin’, guess I’m doin’ fine.” He can only guess he’s doing fine because his emotional state is so murky thanks to this loss. He might be doing fine, but he really can’t tell. Then, “Lonesome Tears” begins. Beck is questioning why he’s crying these tears, but the questions are hypothetical.
“Lonesome tears
I can't cry them anymore
I can't think of what they're for
Oh they ruin me every time
But I'll try
To leave behind some days
These tears just can't erase
I don’t need them anymore”
He can’t detach himself from his pain or his tears. The next song is, in a way his way of washing his hands of this loss. He describes his love as a lost cause and says he’s tired of fighting for her. Pure and simple. There’s “End of the Day” which stresses the importance of good timing in relationships. A relationship ending too late “I’ve seen the end of the day come to late, I’ve seen the love you had turning into hate, had to act like I didn't even care, but I did so I got stranded standing there”, a relationship ending too soon “I’ve seen the end of the day come to soon, not a lot to say and not a lot to do, you played the game, you owe nothing to yourself, rest a day, for tomorrow you can't tell” and his reaction to both “it's nothing that I haven't seen before, but it still kills me like it did before.” The track “Round the Bend” is one of the most beautiful and sad tracks on the album.
We don't have to worry
Life goes where it does
Faster than a bullet
From an empty gun
Turn yourself over
Loose change we could spend
Grinding down diamonds
Round, round, round the bend
People pushing harder
Up against themselves
Make their daggers sharper
Than their faces tell
Babe, it’s your time now
Loose change we could spend
Where we are going
Round, round, round the bend
This has a very final feeling to it. Next is, “Already Dead” which touches on the angry he feels throughout this album. Everything up to this point, you could see being spoken followed by a dusty sigh, but here we can almost here the words coming through clenched teeth.
Time wears away
All the pleasures of the day
All the treasures you could hold
Days turn to sand
Losing strength in every hand
They can't hold you anymore
Already dead to me now
'Coz it feels like I'm watching something die
Love looks away
In the harsh light of the day
On the edge of nothing more
Days fade to black
In the light of what they lack
Nothing's measured by what it needs
Already dead to me now
'Coz it feels like I'm watching something dyin’.
My favorite track on the album is the penultimate tracks “Little One”. This track has such images that I was so affected the first time I heard it. Incredible powerful images of despair and futility along with a chilling chord progression, yow. This song is almost like a lullaby for a child dying of some horrible disease. The dreams are always waiting or waking, both meaning that neither will come true. And the almost childlike verse “drown, drown, sailors run aground, in a sea change, nothing is safe” is one of the worst things I’ve ever heard, but I can’t say why. I think it has to do with the idea of the sea turning to sand and an upheaval on such a scale that the Earth itself would be affected. It’s the futility and sadness in this song that really get to me.
Go to sleep
We're so tired now
Altogether in a snake pit of souls
New days
To throw your chains away
To try to hang your hopes on the wind
Little one
Just a little way
Today all we need is waiting
Night rise
Like the evening prize
In a turnstile backwards we fly
Cold bones
Tied together by
Black ropes we pulled from a swing
Little one
Just a little way
Today all of the dreams are waking
Can't stand on crooked legs
I'm cross-eyed to the wall
In these harbor lights
Satellites explode
Drown, drown
Sailors run aground
In a sea change nothing is safe
Strange waves
Push us every way
In a stolen boat we'll float away
Little one
Hold on
All of the dreams are wasting
The entire album has been about searching and dealing with things, so one could hope that the final track will leave us in a better place than where we started, running from the warmth and happiness of the Golden Age, but nom the last track is called Side of the Road and that’s where we end up. “In a random room/Behind an iron door/Kick an empty can/Across an empty floor. The lack of emphasis of where the album ends shows just how distracted and desolated Beck is. Just end it here. No one will notice.
