The Tweakin Poets Department | SOTW 04/26/2024 (coming to you 05/03/2024)
Because the best poets aren’t too tortured to hit that yoinky sploinky in sepia. This week, let’s check out selections from my favorite albums with portraits of posing weirdos on the cover for no particular relevant reason. Throw in Gaz Coombes, Andrew Bird, and Haley Blais, and these could make a wicked interpretive dance flip book… think about it.
HUMAN BEHAVIOR | Björk I’m not too pretentious to admit it’s pretty easy to get lost listening to Björk, especially if you’re fumbling backwards through her discography, like me. Earlier this year, I made an attempt to instead start at the beginning and move forward marathoning everything Björk had to offer. Though it’s far from her first foray into music, I was only willing to go back as far as Debut, which appropriately kicked off her solo career in 1993 (and I’m about ten months late to celebrate its 30th). Today, Björk’s reputation is that of a peerless, alien artist—one of few musicians fans consistently can’t fathom is a human. Off the heels of reviewing her most recent album, Fossora—probably the most alien she’s sounded to date—I was expecting something similarly visionary from Debut, which may have set me up for disappointment. It’s hard to believe someone like Björk had a beginning, and even harder to believe that Debut isn’t it—since her teenage years, Björk played in punk-rock, goth-rock, and conceptual jazz groups that, while obscure, explain so much of her far-out sound. Despite being a solo album, Debut sounds as if it’s still umbilically attached to the post-punk, almost B-52s sensibilities of her earlier work with the Sugarcubes and jazz fusion group Gling-Gló! (which sounds like a 30 Rock cutaway gag). This gives Debut a bit of a jazzy, almost cabaret sound at times—still weird, certainly, but not quite as genreless as Björk would later become. It’s incredible to discover how impossibly prolific Björk has been from the beginning—it’s the sort of thing that makes me feel like I should’ve been buying property in 2003 as a passive income stream—and even though it wasn’t my favorite album, with a résumé like that, it’s no surprise Debut’s highs are as good as they are.
One of my favorite (re-)discoveries was actually the opener—a classic I’ve been hearing my whole life, but had completely forgotten. As the first song on her first solo album, “Human Behavior” is about as perfect a thesis statement as Björk could’ve written. Björk herself says this piece is a David Attenborough documentary from the animals’ perspective, but even she herself admits it’s also about finding the other humans inscrutable. Like, “There's definitely, definitely, definitely no logic / To human behavior?” Just admit you’re a five-hundred-year-old fairy already. Though far from fairy-like, this piece’s instrumentation is already very distinct, with gizmo chirps accenting a bumbling, timpani backbone, sampled from the intro to Quincy Jones’s “Go Down Dying” (performed by The Ray Brown Orchestra). As with many musical oddities, Björk here makes me appreciate the timpani more by re-contextualizing it. Here, it’s both the percussion and rhythm section of the song—it’s not often you can hum the drum-line of a piece, but the timpani’s bounciness has too much character to not sound singsong. For as much as I’ve credited Björk’s individuality, though, to not acknowledge that a single sample is doing the heavy lifting here would be pretty hypocritical, especially after going so hard on Pip Millet earlier this year—sampling is a valid art form, but it unilaterally bothers me when one song steals another’s hook unaltered, and that’s worth highlighting. However, “Human behavior,” to me, is an exception because its path totally diverges from Quincy Jones’s piece— where both begin with the exact same timpani intro, “Go Down Dying” veers off in a totally different action-adventure direction, while Björk shifts the sample through several key changes at the whims of her whispers, growls, and falsetto screams. Things go especially haywire when a synth breakdown sizzles in at the end, almost straight out of Nine Inch Nails’s “The Only Time.” Any song sampling timpani is bound to be quirky, but strained through the Björk kaleidoscope, it came out all the quirkier—and, I think, became a totally different song.
As much as I love this song, I can’t deny I was surprised to find that “Human Behavior” topped charts in the nineties. In retrospect, it’s pretty clear why—despite being about an inability to connect, that bouncy timpani rhythm is impossible not to connect with. It’s an exaggerated, cartoony sound that pairs perfectly with its similarly successful music video, which is too silly not to love. Taking the documentary metaphor a step further, it features Björk learning to survive in the felt forest from Beau is Afraid by imitating its stop-motion, stuffed animal denizens Also, she plants a USSR flag on the moon in cosmonaut attire? Things get a little unclear for a bit there. I’ll hear her out, but see what you think:
Isn’t that just great? It’s such a silly, strange concept, and yet the children’s museum aesthetic is such a spot-on visualization of this song—can you not hear that timpani in each lumbering footstep of the eight-foot teddy bear eating lone hikers? Even if the dated effects work in this video’s favor, Björk’s vision, as usual, is clearly straining against the limits of budget and technology. It reminds me of Peter Gabriel’s similar video for “Big Time,” which is a crazy coincidence, considering “Human Behavior’s” video narrowly lost to “Steam” at the 1994 Grammys, and I think that’s only because “Steam” features stripper Peter Gabriel in a leather thong. Barring that glaring omission, it’s no wonder a song with so much personality and imagination had a lasting impact—“Human Behavior” even got a Bill Nye the Science Guy parody with Rhoda Dendron’s “Cross Pollination.” Right now, though, I have a hard time unlinking it from this awesome Starfire fanart my sister did in an effort to make her more alien, with the time lapse set to this song. It’s a warm and fuzzy kind of irony when someone’s statement of feeling isolated connects with the same sentiment in so many others, right?
Pairs Well With: “Go Down Dying” (Quincy Jones, perf. The Ray Brown Orchestra) “The Only Time” (Nine Inch Nails), “Cross Pollination” (Rhoda Dendron)
I’M STILL WAITING | Kate Bush Just when I think I’ve run out of Kate Bush songs to talk about, there’s always one more, right? All the way back when I reviewed B-side “Burning Bridge,” I assumed that I’d also covered this even better one as well, but since I ironically waited to review “I’m Still Waiting” (boo, hiss), let’s look at it this week as a little extra treat. Being the B-side for “This Woman’s Work, “I’m Still Waiting” has the unenviable job of following an iconic piano ballad that’ll carve out your guts like a pumpkin—a landing “I’m Still Waiting” sticks by completely ignoring that anything devastating just happened. I think it’s much better placed in the EP Aspects of the Sensual World, collecting the relatively more euphoric B-sides from the Sensual World album. In such company, the lush textures of this piece can finally flourish without being overpowered by the painful catharsis of “This Woman’s Work.” That’s not to say “I’m Still Waiting” is a happy song, exactly—it’s just a lot easier to dance to. Scored with the Sensual World’s crisp, stripped-down instrumentation, “I’m Still Waiting” uses the lowest piano keys as a beat rather than a melody, joining the driven, eighties drums as an anchor. It’s the reason “I’m Still Waiting” even stays a dance song, in fact—otherwise, the ethereal piano, synth, and harmonies would float away into something more reverent. While that’s absolutely a note Kate Bush is willing to hit, “I’m Still Waiting” thematically needs this contrast—coming down is exactly the essence of the lyrics.
“Somewhere a door is opening
Somewhere a door is closing
Somewhere somebody dies
Somewhere a newborn baby criesMaybe the love has gone
But there's still a heart that's beating
Though the clouds have come
Maybe the sun will come outThe storm is coming back
Maybe you'll be coming back
'Cause I'm still waiting”
To me, this is a really perfect picture of getting comforted by someone who intellectualizes their emotions. Yea, the only constants are pleasure, pain and change; yea, new miracles are remade the moment others are snuffed out; yea, we’re all intersecting branches of a singular universe, blah blah blah, but no amount of perspective can erase those human feelings—“the sun will come out,” but until that’s tangible, our speaker is “still waiting.” Of course, though her lyrics are always wonderful, it’s Bush’s voice that summons what most can only describe—the glistening harmony and hope as she sings about yin and yang; the sudden drop to low, minor, murmurs as she disappointedly says she’s still waiting. Beautiful, brilliant, etc. Five stars! For a B-Side!
Pairs Well With: “Reaching Out” (Kate Bush), “Bachelorette” (Björk), “Intervention” (Arcade Fire)
V-2 SCHNEIDER | David Bowie Boy, I thought all five of these songs were gonna be quickies, but especially this one. TL;DR, this is a three-minute instrumental, it has killer bass, some funky saxophone, and a sweeping build. It’s very good. Move along, no political implications and self-insight here. This is David Bowie we’re talking about—nothing tortured about this particular poet.
When it comes to “Heroes,” there are probably more important tracks to talk about—it’s an iconic album at the center of Bowie’s Berlin Trilogy, written during a period of recovery post-cocaine addiction, and the titular song is one of his most famous and emotional. In my defense, I like my obscure oddities, and “Heroes” is full of them—right now, this is my favorite of the bunch. Making expert use of its three minutes, “V-2 Schneider” is a scene in a snow globe. Opening with jet-trail shrieks, “E5150”-descending synth, and sharp snare runs, V-2 Schneider conjures a military air show—a power play before a broiling conflict, maybe even on a crisp, overcast morning where the clouds still seem bright despite smothering the sky. As the bass plugs on in an off-kilter key, saxophone bursts in on the off-beat, as if to trip up the goose-stepping soldiers in this military montage. Even as these different tracks synch again, the only vocals here sing “V-2 Schneider” with such wavering distortion that they sound reversed from a backwards recording, like the song is still fighting its own forward current. It’s such an evocative gem—one that must be more than meets the ear, especially with such a cryptic title.
Fittingly for a song that at times fights itself, the title of “V-2 Schneider” holds a contradiction within itself. The “Schneider” in question is none other than Florian Schneider of Kraftwerk, whose pioneering in robotic electronica was a major influence on Bowie’s uptightness in this era and beyond. Where things get ugly, however, are with that unassuming “V-2”—what I had assumed to be a vestigial “version two” is actually a deliberate reference to the V-2 missile, the german attempt at an atomic bomb as part of “Hitler’s Last Gamble.” While its postwar impact eventually contributed the space program, many believe this homage, in conjunction with the song’s militaristic sound, explicitly juxtaposes Kraftwerk with their allegedly fascist ideology and stylings. Considering Bowie’s aforementioned admiration of Kraftwerk, this might seem contradictory or even concerning, but as this far more well-researched review from Pushing Ahead of the Dame describes, seeing these fledgling musicians flirt with fascism may have cut too close to bad memories of his own provocative past—the very reason he had exiled himself to Berlin. Prior to the trilogy, his latest reinvention was an unsavory character known as the Thin White Duke: the closest Bowie ever came to a real-life villain arc (Bully Bowie?). Coping badly with fame and coked to the moon and back, The Duke’s addled attempts at “making a statement” bordered on Hitler apologia, which only fueled the rumor mill to transform Bowie’s photographed wave at a fan into a Nazi salute. Once clean, Bowie profusely apologized for his drug-induced actions at practically every opportunity, vehemently disavowing fascism to his death, but the Thin White Duke’s words still scars Bowie’s reputation, sparking controversy to this day. Perhaps, just as he later steered Trent Reznor towards sobriety, this was Bowie’s come-to-jesus for Kraftwerk—a statement that he both admires their art but is wary of its message. “V-2 Schneider” could be a cautionary tale—that fascist imagery, like the V-2 rocket, will only humiliate the user’s lofty aspirations at making a splash.
Okay, but is it really that deep? Not everyone seems to think so. Many fans, who see this situation through rose-tinted glasses and readily dismiss Bowie’s mistakes, aren’t so sure there’s a message here beyond the surface homage. While I think erasing problematic patches of Bowie’s history nullifies his inspirational growth, I’ll admit that much of the music’s composition is far more improvisational than I initially read. That off-beat saxophone, for example, isn’t fighting the beat—it’s simply Bowie missing his cue, which was only kept in thanks to legendary guest guitarist Brian Eno’s Oblique Strategies cards, which reminded them to honor their mistakes. Still, while it may not have been a conscious critique, I’m inclined to believe that “V-2 Schneider” is at least a winking warning disguised as homage.
As for Bowie himself, I’m glad this era healed him enough to bounce back from his darkest hour. The creatives and culture behind the Berlin trilogy created a totally unique sound that paved the way for my favorite Bowie experiments later in life. This insane live version of “V-2 Schneider” from the 1997 Earthling tour, to me, shows so much of that growth in our spaceman—it’s full of life and energy, and although I wouldn’t say this techno style is better than the original, it has totally shed its militant rigidity, and the dangerous ideology that came with it.
Pairs Well With: “Bombers” (David Bowie), “Brian Song” (Monty Python), “E5150” (Black Sabbath)
ROAD TO JOY | Peter Gabriel Someone I don’t see compared to Bowie often enough is Peter Gabriel—both musicians somehow palmed the cultural pulse while staying true to their spiritual, upside-down selves, releasing revolutionary work well into old age. Easily mistaken for Bowie’s “Fame” and co-produced by Brian Eno (see what I mean?), “Road to Joy” is now the fifth song I’ve reviewed from Gabriel’s recent swan song, i/O—an album I keep coming back to because it’s got depth in so many directions. I’ve been wanting to spotlight “Road to Joy” since its June release, but after my stuffy, chin-stroking review of “So Much,” I figured it’s important to remind everyone that i/O isn’t all solemn piano ballads. As the midpoint of the album, “Road to Joy,” like “I’m Still Waiting,” has the unenviable task of bridging the apocalyptic rumination of “Four Kinds of Horses” [Reviewed 11/03/2023] and the meditative vulnerability of “So Much,” and if you’re as emotionally defeated as I am by that point, this song is the perfect shot in the arm from the very first gurgles of Don E’s bass keys. “Road to Joy” is oozing with funk from the outset, but with the regality of an orchestra. The instrumentation in this piece spares no expense, sporting not just full brass and strings sections, but sprinkles of plucked violin and cello that add so much life and asymmetry to an otherwise straightforward song. For as much as I love Gabriel’s active artistic growth with i/O, it’s pretty cool that the core of “Road to Joy” sounds just like it could’ve come out at the height of his career. It’s undeniably an incredibly eighties song, and one which belongs in the same trilogy as “Sledgehammer” and “Steam—” if it’d been released in that era, it would’ve been chart-topper right alongside them, too.
Like most youngest siblings, though, “Road to Joy” paves its own way, especially when it comes to its philosophy. Intelligent as they are, “Sledgehammer” and “Steam” are both just witty sex songs, and many initially assumed “Road to Joy” was following those footsteps. That’d certainly be the most literal interpretation of the pink mandala of middle fingers used to promote this piece, created in collaboration with none other than revolutionary Chinese artist Ai Weiwei. In context with the themes of Gabriel’s live show, I had assumed that flipping the bird amidst this song’s infectious glee was a statement about radical positivity, like that of Nelson Mandela. As Gabriel reminded his audience, forgiveness can be a “fuck you,” but not in, like, a cool youth pastor way. It was an incredible segue live, but lyrically, there’s not a lot of support for this, either—in fact, all this talk about the titular “Road to Joy” while interchanging “walking down” with “waking up” sounds to me more like Kundalini yoga and inner enlightenment.
Of course, none of these are quite as perfect as the meaning Gabriel himself attributes to this piece—and, I mean, who better to have the final say? No, I’m not jealous. In his always-grounding full-moon breakdown that dropped with this single, Gabriel reveals that this song was inspired by those suffering from locked-in syndrome, and depicts the visceral relief of i/O’s protagonist escaping a paralyzing coma. This, I think, is depicted perfectly by the dissonant twinges at the end of each exuberant bridge—a sting of horror violin icily accenting “jump into the lake” not only perfectly evokes this plunge, but ends on some diminished or unfinished chord that leaves listeners midair without a place to land. As celebratory as this song’s proclamation of “back in the world” may be, there’s a definite breathlessness to this escape from paralysis. I know I’m prone to over-metaphorizing things, but I can’t help but wonder if this particular paralysis is meant to be ideological, especially following “Four Kinds of Horses,” a song about the religious indoctrination that creates suicide bombers. Death, after all, is what i/O defies from every angle, as Gabriel reaffirms in the full-moon video:
“[Ai Weiwei] has this middle finger image that he uses a lot in his work, and it is often directed to those in power. He's definitely been at the root end of power, as his father was before him. So that's an important symbol for him, and I guess in the context of the story I am now working on, death is the dominant power, and the hero is coming back to life and raising his finger to death.”
If that wasn’t a mic drop enough, I think i/O’s very existence is also middle finger to death—if Gabriel can sound as good as he did forty years ago on a song with the self-same gusto, then who knows how much youth this old man still has in reserve.
Pairs Well With: “The Tower That Ate People” (Peter Gabriel) [Reviewed 11/17/2023], “Fame” (David Bowie), “Papa Plastic” (Seatbelts)
THE RED BRICK | Jeff Tweedy Much like Adrianne Lenker outside of Big Thief, I’m prone to underestimating Tweedy’s prolific solo output. Despite being Wilco’s frontman, when surrounded by virtuosic musicians like guitarist Nels Cline, it can be easy to write Tweedy off as just the band’s lyricist and emotional core (“just,” as if that’s not more than enough). Having been a Wilco groupie since second grade, however, I can attest that Tweedy’s no slouch with a guitar, either, and his solo work proves his strings are as sharp as his self-proclaimed “overrated” insight.
I’m not going to call the “The Red Brick” a revolutionary rock song, but god damn does it get the job done. As much as I enjoy these weekly (haha) pretentious pontifications about emotional resonance and psychological lyricism and blah blah blah, I often wonder if it’s all a grandiose justification for an unnameable taste underneath—if, maybe, we all like certain songs just because, and if that soul-knowing is the only justification necessary. If that’s the case, that would certainly put me out of my yapping career (because we all know how much moolah my Squarespace blog is raking in on the daily), but it would also explain “The Red Brick” a lot easier. For all his lyrical skill, this piece is proof that Tweedy’s a master of hooks as well, with plenty of priceless riffs (and weed) under his interchangeable beanie/cowboy hat (there are two wolves inside of you, etc.). At scarcely two and a half minutes, The Red Brick’s bare-bones chords scraped on fraying strings still manage to build an intense crescendo, set on edge by a distant, almost inquisitive background melody. This plodding beat feels foreboding until an eruption of crunchy electric at the end that’s frankly nothing short of badass. It’s just the right amount of off to be ominous, and just the right amount of ominous to be cool, and just the right amount of cool to be looped over and over, at least for me. Even in its simplicity, it scratches a musical itch I’m seeking out in most songs—what a privilege it must be to have pieces like these reliably growing out of you, right?
Pairs Well With: “Not Everything Grows” (Shakey Graves), “Ozone” (Tall Dwarves), “Saturday, Pt. 1 / Saturday, Pt. 2” (Ty Segall) [Reviewed 10/21/2022]
ONE-PERSON GAME AGAINST NATURE II #V2 | Michal Rovner Okay, I gotta be real, I’m photography-illiterate, so the words “chromogenic color print” sounded really fancy to me, but it turns out that’s just what you call modern photograph printing material. Here I thought I was sounding fancy…
In her photo series “One-Person Game Against Nature,” photographer Michal Rovner erases all sense of dimension and depth by capturing figures floating in the Red Sea and digitally altering these silhouettes until they’re scarcely more than ghosts. Though several of these prints have added colors, I chose this particular piece not for the shallow V2 connection, but for the suffocating grayscale. I love how eerie this looks without much color to speak of, like a paranormal photo zoomed and cropped to oblivion. When I first saw a selection of these photos at the Denver Art Museum, I couldn’t help but imagine drowning in a blizzard of TV static—a human form still pushes through despite being reduced to pixel fuzz. I know this is hypocritical coming from me, but sometimes, the simplest images are the most evocative.
This may be a strange note to end on, but it feels troubling to spotlight an Israeli artist in the midst of an attempted erasure of the Palestinian people. Like I said last time this came up (and will repeatedly say so long as governments senselessly pit their citizens against each other), individuals are not their nations and cannot be held responsible for their nations’ actions—it’s the same reason why anyone crying “but Hamas” is lying to themselves, because there is absolutely no justification for the IDF to fire on innocent men, women, children and NGO aid workers. I don’t know anything about Michal Rovner’s personally beliefs, and I’ve wanted to feature her photography for almost two years, so it’s hardly related to the ongoing Palestinian genocide that her country is committing. Still, in a time when most world powers would rather stand by and watch Palestinian people be driven to extinction, it does feel strange not to spotlight their art and culture, even if my platform is essentially inconsequential. If anyone knows of Palestinian art or artists you’d like me to feature in the future, let me know. Free Palestine.