The first time I listened to Dear Science, I admit, I had it playing in the background. However I noticed from the getgo that it didn't sound right. And by "right" I mean "unbridled." Indeed if you asked me how Dear Science sounded I would have to say "tame," which, if you know TVotR, seems impossible.
A few minutes ago I went back to Dear Science, armed with Bose headphones and metrolyrics.com. I went through each song with a blue-light and a microscope.
Before I launch into my conclusion I want to take you on a trip back one album to Return to Cookie Mountain, which, in full disclosure, is one of my top five albums of all time. Now, Cookie Mountain was my first experience with TVOTR and I bought the album (the last album I ever got on CD) going solely off the strength of its single Wolf Life Me. When I got home I popped it into my old Sony portable cd player and had a listen.
Return to Cookie Mountain hits your senses on multiple fronts. The throbbing ambience mixed with a myriad collection of uniquely utilized instruments lays the scene. Next comes the incredible range and power of vocalist Tunde Adebimpe, who plays the role of narrator through your 40 odd minute journey through TVotR's underworld. Last comes the piercing, passionate, absurd, and devastating lyrics which tell a story of love, hate, agony, and lust.
For centuries artists, writers, and musicians have strived to describe life on the fringe. What always impressive me about TVotR was their ability to take you there. When you hit play you're no longer sitting on your couch, you're confessing love on a street corner in Brooklyn. You're jacking a car to have sex in. You're fighting heroin addiction.
The album strikes you on a gut level, each song seemingly dedicated to a different emotion. Lust (Wolf Like Me), Agony (Tonight), Absurdity (A Method), Hate (The Blues from Down Here), Hope (Wash the Day). And the music worked in perfect flux with the vocals and lyrics to convey these emotions.
By the time the last chords of Wash the Day fade and silence floods in you're back sitting on your couch like Alice waking up from Wonderland.
Now, on to Dear Science
The root cause I found for Dear Science's inability to :cough: perform is the lyrics. They are almost wholly devoid of emotion. You can tell by the fact that both Tunde with the rest of the band don't exactly know how to play them. Compared to Cookie Mountain there is relatively little diversity in tempo, musicality, or vocal fluctuation. Sure, there is some, but nothing eye raising, especially after hearing Tunde go from screeching blood and malice in The Blues from Down Here to croon stoicism and comfort in Tonight in just the palmfull of seconds it took for the tracks to change.
The reason for this, I think, is that the lyrics are too absurd.
"Too absurd?" you say. "Absurdity is what these guys are about!!"
True. TVotR has always been incredibly effective at wielding one of the most hit-or-miss literary devices in history. Absurdity makes up their lyrical backbone. But the difference between the absurdity in Return to Cookie Mountain or Desperate Youth, Bloodthirsty Babes and Dear Science is that the lyrics in the former use absurdity to augment non-absurd plotline of the song. In Dear Science, its all absurd.
Whereas Return to Cookie Mountain was dipped in absurdity, like a candy apple, Dear Science was deep fat fried. There doesn't seem to be any coherence or general purpose. I mean, what does "In my mind I'm drowning butterflies, broken dreams, and alibis. That's fine. I've seen my palette blown to monochrome [a black and white photograph]/hollow heart clicks hollowtone, it's time" (Dancing Choose) mean?!
These lyrics aren't used to augment the primary lyrical thread, like the way "Playhouses/swept away by the river now/confound me/sound me out" (Playhouses) is used to emphasize the loss of innocence felt by the singer as his youth is washed away by the "cigarettes and sugar shit of alcohol breath."
As it stands the songs are simply composed of absurdist statements that conform begrudgingly to create a vague song meaning. Sure, I can tell you that Golden Age is about 21st century American consumerism, conformity and misguided rebellion, but...so what?
That's not saying that TVotR's lyrics are bad. As poetry there amazing! I mean, over the course of three albums (with emphasis on Dear Science) they've outdone Ginsberg, Kerouac and the rest of the Beat Generation. "Angry young mannequin American/apparently still to the rhythm/better get to the back of me if you can't stand the vision" (Dancing Choose) or "Death is a door that love walks through/in and out/in and out/back and forth" (Stork and Owl). I just feel it would have been better had TVotR taken what they had written and published a poetry anthology rather than try to...you know, sing to them.
With all that said I have to admit, Dear Science is a really good album. The music is beautiful and the lyrics are still highly poetic (if a bit scatterbrained). I'm not trying to say that Dear Science is a bad album, but I can't deny that it was a severely disappointing follow up to an absolutely perfect breakout. Let me put it this way: had anyone else produced Dear Science I would vehemently argue that they should get the top spot for 2008. But seeing as I know that TVotR is capable of much more I can't help but sigh and love Dear Science less for not being as accomplished as its older brother.
In the end Dear Science didn't move me. I wasn't aroused or excited in any way. There wasn't even toe-tapping! While Cookie Mountain grabbed your hand, stuffed you in the back of a stolen convertible and took you places, Dear Science showed up with a projector and some slides to drift through.
That's not saying I'm still anxiously awaiting the next release from (in my opinion) America's best band.
Nicely done, Dunleavy. Your best post, I think.
No comments:
Post a Comment