McDonalds
The road splits at the top of Bray’s Main Street,
after a steady rise from the Dargle dip, and
the bridge between “Little Bray” and her larger
sister.
One could go either way, up the Killarney Road perhaps,
beneath its leafy shade, and venture off on any of its
branches, gentle variations on old suburbia,
King Edward Road, detatched, largely, or off any other
way, or off to the White City to sample her virtue.
Or to take the left, the Vevay Road, a lighter air,
touched by the slightly salted breeze of the sea, coursing
down the coast to Greystones. Not before the boys skulk
from behind the shadow of the Presentation brothers,
to meet the Loreto girls for a brief lunch of crisps and
white bread, or a cigarette in Charnwood.
But at that fork there sits the Town Hall, grand and guarded
by a great stone menace, formerly a fountain I think,
but nonetheless a striking, smirking, winged beast.
And in McDonald’s, for that is what is now inside
this once fine hall,
sits a man reading Frost, a pencil scratching a crude map
into a napkin, wondering what allegory to his life
could be etched into the roads he knew, only distantly
interested in his softening ice cream.
To write about the self, he thought, was a
wonderful act of self-subversion, but no reasonable
meaning could be pressed upon the tarmacadum veins
of old Bray, he could not fit romance between the kerbs,
nor identity in bins, as he was a simple character,
so he finished with a crude drawing of
himself wearing a bow tie, and looked out at the
Killarney Road’s first bus stop.
Best Coast – Crazy for You
- Imagine doing something perfectly.
Crazy for You
The penultimate track of Best Coast’s Crazy for You, Each and Every Day, hints at the root of the loneliness that saturates the record. For the eleven preceding numbers we grapple with the angst-ridden lyrical voyage of Bethany Cosentino’s heartbroken solitude; she has lost her love and can’t bear to be without him. Then she sings: “Even through the cheating all I know is that I want you, I wish we could go back to when I was seventeen… and I wouldn’t have been so mean.”
The reveal, that it was our sympathetic protagonist who caused the original rift, is wrapped into the forlorn teen pop word weaving that characterises the whole album. One could write off the lyrical content of Crazy for You as simplistic. Cosentino’s voice could be singing the lines of a diary documenting a lengthy but unrequited obsession, simple and raw, the garbled scribblings of a teenager. Yet it all fits together.
The alternating thrashing and plodding, the lo-fi casette sound of snapping drums and soft distorted guitars, and the pleading words of desperate longing create a nostalgic ode to youth and feeling. That wish to go back in time is realised in form, even if Cosentino doesn’t get her boy back. She doesn’t, of course, at least not within the thirteen songs here. The last track, When I’m with You, is billed as a “bonus track”. It’s an appendix that harks back to better times, before separation. “You and me, we’re just crazy,” she sings, “so when I’m with you I have fun.” Even in recalling happiness, an emotionally distraught declaration waves us off in a beautiful repeating harmony; “I hate sleeping alone.”
Short and brash guitar-heavy pop songs are served up on a platter – the longest track being a second or two over the three minute mark – and a first impression might communicate a teenager-in-a-shed kind of sound. This is not a simple visit to your childhood shed or bedroom though; it is a polished reconstruction by flashback artists. Ali Koehler, former Vivian Girls drummer, and multi-instrumentalist Bobb Bruno provide the noise behind their singer-songwriter leading lady and they match her in understated mood creation.
Every song is about the same thing, that lost love, but it swings between a perfectly cast classic indie pop and honeysuckle moments of faux-fifties balladry (Our Deal) and earnest surf punk (Happy). Lead track Boyfriend delivers a haze of lazy chord bashing, pausing momentarily for a water echo guitar solo that could be one of your friends showing everyone that he can play anything by The Smiths, he just doesn’t want to change his sound settings. Meanwhile, we’re plugged into our story; “I’d love him to the very end, but instead he’s just a friend… I wish he was my boyfriend.”
The variations are not just musically interesting. They are careful accompaniments to the variations of Cosantino’s rich and textured vocal. As she shouts about losing her mind on Each and Every Day, the percussion slaps and rolls and an energetic and deliberate noise strumming penetrates the furore. Then everything breaks down with a soothing bass note reverb, allowing a calmer moment of delirious epiphany behind jingling tambourine. “Everyday day I wake up and thank the stars above, for sending me a man that I could really love.”
Enabled by her band, Cosantino becomes the star of the piece. She writes and sings the lines of an honest loss, revealing a nuanced and thoughtful perusal of love and regret. She shades what some might call an overly simplistic narrative with poignant moments, such as her flash of feminine self-doubt in Boyfriend, singing of how she feels inadequate against her “prettier and skinnier” rival who has a college degree (she dropped out). What might on first glance appear to be a mere summer rock record, is actually a far more consciously crafted work. “I pick up the phone, I want to talk about my day, it really sucked.” It could have been written with candid red lipstick, a series of diary entries infected by the torments of teenage reflection and the lethargy of depression.
This isn’t teen pop as a genre; it’s more like teen pop as subject matter. It is very rare to be able to call a record “genuine” without recoiling at the cliché of that description, but Crazy for You allows it, even encourages it, and most certainly warrants it.
Boasting
Funny how a Saturday night in, off the booze, has led me to watch a documentary about Electric Ladyland. It is a demystification of an album * album album I usually only lisssssss-ten to when I’m completely tripping balls. Wasting into a chair in a poorly kept student abode. I’m pretty cool, like a fence or a piece or a mortar block on some cold weather. Have you taken acid? You haven’t? How come if people ever mention taking mad drugs – and from my experience they only say so when asked or if there is a music documentary on television – because it isn’t something that just ‘comes up’, other people think they’re boasting. If they say it without being asked then they are not cool cool cool (Victorious – Nick). It’s really easy to get these drugs, so why don’t you just take them (and take them and take them)? They are brilliant most of the time, just don’t be sad or down or unhappy, or unhappy. Just don’t ever stay in again again another time time time, or the music you listen to when you’re having the time time time of your life will be ruined by a bunch of talking heads wishing they were Hendrix (some sixty-year-old fucker with tiny round glasses is doing a pidgeon head/neck movement right now listening to himself play bass on a Hendrix track from decades ago. The nasal fucker just said, “of yeah, it was a real highlight.”) And they are talking about Crosstown Traffic, saying, “bass and guitar rhythm the same, at the same time? How did we think of that?” I have no idea if you did but there is a chance it might have been Hendrix. “And Jimi said to me, ‘oh man, what’s that chord you’re playing’, and I told him it was an augmented ninth.” The English people on this are annoying the shite out of me. Everyone on it is just as bad I suppose. They’re all getting a pay check out of this, for insight into the fantastic bit they wrote for or contributed to a great album. None of them have done anything since, just sat around chatting about how great they were. They’re also slagging of Jimi Hendrix a bit, the Welsh fellow particularly. They’re all arse clowns arse arse pricks. Why did you not do it without Jimi Hendrix? Thin Lizzy got together on a December night when, I think, at least two of the four original members were tripping to fuck, right? I couldn’t be any more glad that these Jimi Hendrix hangers on (who are currently dissing the hangers on that Jimi would bring to the studio) are dickheads. Dickheads. One word, it isn’t hyphenated or two words. “He had this incredible ability to <do a certain thing>.” Well, maybe you should realise that he was that he was that he was that he was the catalyst for that music. Everybody was called, asked, or a genius. These people should all vanish. These people are all less modest versions of the guy who played organ on Like a Rolling Stone. The English wankers are killing me here. It isn’t relevant that they are English, really. One of them seems to have produced some of it, with the Welsh guy. He is at a mixing desk, pretending to mix it again. It is sad. The Voodoo Child comes on and I’d like to be with a lovely woman (only one, where is she? painting her ex-boyfriend onto her nails okay okay okay). What kind of energy is this. ? > ? This music, the twang trang chrang chrang tish chrang. That voice. There is no music.”Everybody got their money’s worth.” Yes you did you pieces of shit shit shite. Raise your contribution up to the world. In a goblet. Make the money. “I miss him a lot.” I’d say you were friends alright. You are a piece of shit. “The man was a lot of fun to be around.” Really. And now there is a slow motion version of a Pixies gig from years ago where all of the band members are fat fat fat fat fat fat fat fat fat recurring. They are very good. Debaser Debaser. 2004. Vintage year for Kim Deal and Frank Black don’t even give me that other name. If Jimi had lived 15 years past his best, would he have gotten fat? Yes. With banal chord progressions.
*This was a Facebook status until this point.
Drop Cap, Thorn Woman
Drop Cap, Thorn Woman
The same letter that makes the worst drop cap,
makes the best beginning.
How else would I wonder what the best
drop cap was. Stop.
He was formed by his previouseseseseses,
but he was not so scarred
as this new current
seems to be.
Who cannot
speak without bearing her
palms, and showing that she could not
pull out those now rotting thorns, the nails, the nails.
