Flak Magazine: Got No Songs on the Radio, Tracks 6-10, 01.31.03

A yearning, wounded Beck? It's not a joke; in fact, Beck has proved that, for all his winking, panoptic wordplay and genre-hopping, he isn't pulling off an elaborate prank. Beck fits each album to his current circumstances; it's a testament to his musical gifts that each album sounds nothing like its predecessor.

Sea Change finds Beck examining the pain of loss (he went through what must have been a difficult break-up, and this was apparently a response), but the schizoid sampling and sound collage of Odelay and Prince-inspired funk of Midnite Vultures are a distant memory. Country, '70s-era folk and rich orchestrations straight from a Van Dyke Parks album define the sound, and the lyrics are as wounded and lovelorn as any George Jones song.

"Guess I'm Doing Fine" lingers in memory. The song's chorus is instructive: "It's only lies that I'm living/ It's only tears that I'm crying/ It's only you that I'm losing/ Guess I'm doing fine." Beck picks out the first chords on a single guitar; additional guitars bend and stretch their notes off into an endless horizon poised somewhere between darkness and the sun's first light. This is as late as late-night ballads get. (— Christopher Hickman)

The tension in this slow-burning song is thicker than the smoke from the cigarette that singer Liam McKahey must be holding, as he observes the actions of an indifferent party.

The way you arch your back and comb your hair
The way you only come when no one else is there
The way you look like you might know a secret
There's not a lot I can do
It's peculiarly you

A delicately played ride cymbal that sounds like rain hitting a window sill keeps time for McKahey, who also receives support from wah-wah flavored guitar, stand-up bass and jazzy piano.

After the second verse, Cousteau's instrumentalists become louder and more active, and McKahey switches from a rich baritone to a high-pitched wail to remind himself for the first time that in the end, he's better off "leaving well enough alone."

As the song trickles to its conclusion, it's easy to picture McKahey going to a dive bar to meet former Walker Brothers singer and stylistic equal Scott Walker, who knows a little bit about addressing emotional turmoil in his music, too. (— Chris M. Junior)

Low is to a song as William Carlos Williams is to a poem. It doesn't take much for the Duluth, Minn., trio to get right to the red of the wheelbarrow, as they've done best with the gospel-tinged "Point of Disgust."

Only the voice of Mimi Parker (so unaffected here that the slightest rasp in her throat is discernible) and a tinkling, seesaw piano melody are at work in this circular hymn; nothing else is necessary. And that's been the point behind Low's craft since it began as a joke some 10 years ago — less is just enough.

But even with so little, there's a slew of particulars that hints toward the teetering whole. When Parker faintly whispers, "OK" and adjusts her feet at the piano pedals before the song even starts, it's a private aside to herself, as if she's preparing, not for the strain of reaching those high notes, but for exposing such intimate apathy. And each subtle component of the song resonates its title: the slow lilt of Parker's descending scale; the barely audible omission of letters (check: 1'06"); the echo of "hard," "fast," "me," "last" in the chorus; what sounds like rainfall in the background (this is already dire; it's raining, too?) and finally, the piano that scarcely holds it together.

"Point of Disgust" is spare, even for Low, and it's what makes the track so artfully deceptive. You'll be too busy sighing over the plinking piano and Parker's croon to notice the anxiety of the combination. (— Lavina Lee)

It's necessary to point out that some of the defining elements of the Fire Show's style are absent from "Supplicants," a pretty mystery in the middle of the group's swansong. Missing in action are the serrated trebly guitar noise and dub-party-at-the-end-of-the-earth rhythm section boom that made the band so fierce, so much more than a postpunk revival act. Totally uncompromising and refreshingly unabashed in acknowledging their inspirations (lots of Public Image Ltd. and the Birthday Party, for starters), the Fire Show made such a powerful racket that the band's existence could only amount to a grapple between Importance and Obscurity.

The nightmare noise momentarily held aside, we instead have frontman M Resplendent's most vulnerable, most beautiful vocal performance. Once upon a time his voice was broken glass; now it is a wisp of smoke, an insinuation, a lonely sonar signal. Here the Fire Show have finally digested the remix aesthetic, a PiL swallowed whole in one gulp, so the original is the remix is the original: The vocals drift in and swirl at different angles only to eventually, naturally be interrupted by alien opera singers and a wall of Mexican radio. Or maybe our CD players are just picking up signals from an alternate (better?) reality where you can find scrawled on every high school notebook, "Give me good directions to the bottom of the ocean/ give me good directions that will never fail." (— Wayne Lewis)

This is certainly the oddest tune to appear on the year-end mix, and I was a bit worried as to where I was gonna slot it in. But the odd sonic collage at the end of "Dollar and Cent Supplicants" makes a perfect lead-in to this sample stew, which kicks off with Miss Piggy. How can you not love a song that opens with a Miss Piggy sample? (Answer: You can't not love it.)

Like the rest of the songs on the band's debut, five-song record, "Dinner for Two" is a mish-mash of eclectic samples. Kermit's sweetie gives way to a driving R&B beat, teaming with slinky, spy-movie guitar, a laugh track and creeped-out cello. Around the one-minute mark, the song weirds out and grinds to a halt, before being reborn as a pleasant, downbeat techno tune similar to early Orb or Aidan Moffat of Arab Strap's work as Lucky Pierre. (— Eric Wittmershaus)

Introduction
Tracks 1-5 | Tracks 6-10
Tracks 11-15 | Tracks 16-21
Personal annotated mixes:
Lavina Lee | Wayne Lewis
Yancey Strickler | Eric Wittmershaus