THE BOOKS: THE WAY OUT (2010)
1) Group Autogenics I; 2) IDKT;
3) I Didn't Know That; 4) A Cold Freezin' Night; 5) Beautiful People; 6) I Am
Who I Am; 7) Chain Of Missing Links; 8) All You Need Is A Wall; 9) Thirty
Incoming; 10) A Wonderful Phrase By Gandhi; 11) We Bought The Flood; 12) The
Story Of Hip Hop; 13) Free Translator; 14) Group Autogenics II.
Question: so why exactly did The Books break
up? Answer: why, cuz the darn kids just don't read 'em no more these days! In
this sad, illiterate age, plagued by free porn and Angry Birds...
...oops, sorry, wrong platform. The correct
answer, of course, is: because so few people really cared if they lived or died
that they preferred to die. For publicity's sake, I assume. «The Books broke up
today». «What are you talking about? I only just finished rearranging the
shelves». «No, apparently there was a whole band
out there, called The Books, and they just broke up.» «Whoah, you don't say? A
band called The Books? Why didn't anybody tell me? What's their game? Where can
I buy their records? Do they offer a last minute garage sale? Is the fan club
offering T-shirts for free?»
Not sure about T-shirts, but at least the band
went out with its most transparently «musical» album ever. Ironically, it is
also their one record that is the least dependent on their traditional brands
of instrumentation. Most of the backing tracks are either electronic or
R'n'B-ish, or both, with the emphasis no longer on guitar and cello. This is
not necessarily a plus in itself, but it makes the record more dynamic and
jerky, so at the very least it is not that easy to fall asleep to the
individual tracks.
Moving on, the album, for the first time ever,
somehow tries to explain itself to the befuddled listener. "Hello,
greetings and welcome. Welcome to a new beginning, for this tape will serve you
as a new beginning... On this recording, music specifically created for its
pleasurable effects upon your mind, body and emotions is mixed with a warm
orange colored liquid. Your body is now a glass container". If you have
already signed a written consent allowing your body to be treated as a glass
container, who knows? — your mind, body and emotions might even consider The Way Out an introspective
masterpiece.
Or «outrospective», whatever. The herky-jerky
nature of these tunes produces a paranoid impression, which is way better than
a lethargic impression. ʽI Didn't Know Thatʼ sounds like a shredded and recycled
hip-hop (or would that be trip-hop?) track with a free jazz flavor for good measure.
ʽA Cold Freezin' Nightʼ features a little boy threatening to blow your brains
out to the merry sounds of something in between a robotic electro-funk pattern
and a video game soundtrack. ʽI Am Who I Amʼ tips its hat to industrial metal
(soft, though) as the protagonist asserts his identity ("I will be who I
am and what I am"). And so on — do I really need to go through all the
tracks?
Actually, a couple of the tracks almost work as
actual songs. ʽAll You Need Is A Wallʼ is a rare spot of quiet acoustic
meditation and falsetto vocal harmonies; and ʽFree Translatorʼ is an acoustic
folk composition, plain and simple. Neither of the tunes is particularly
memorable or original, but at least The Books leave you unable to say: «These
guys never made an actual song in
their entire life». Although, come to think of it, it would sound cool,
especially considering that they are much better at collages anyway.
In the end, I would probably have given the
whole thing the usual negative assessment, if it weren't for ʽThe Story Of
Hip-Hopʼ, a track that lambasts the genre in the subtlest way possible — as
actual hip-hop samples are mixed in with a steadier rhythm track, «disrupting
the flow» of the whole thing every several seconds, someone narrates «the story
of Hip-Hop» as an animate character, including smart observations about the
latter, such as "He never rests. He beats and whirrs and whirrs so fast
that you can't tell what he looks like". And the moral at the end:
"Now you see the trouble little Hip Hop got into. It was all because he
didn't look where he hopped..." Hey, could I take credit for that? Guess
not. Too bad.
So, The
Way Out is not a particularly bad way out for these guys. If their purpose
in art was to confuse and derail, I must say this is the only record in the catalog that seems to me to have hit at least
somewhere near that mark. Occasionally
intriguing, occasionally funny, rarely boring, featuring ʽA Wonderful Phrase
By Gandhiʼ, and lots and lots and lots of «original» text that I very much want
to see as a parody on spiritual
sermons than the real thing (ʽChain Of Missing Linksʼ is pretty much the apogee
here). It's okay. I just hope these guys never come together again. Out is out,
after all. It isn't nice to cheat.
I hope your addenda sections don't have to go alphabetically. It would be a shame to wait all the way until Z for a review of the recently released Zammuto solo album, which I really really like. It's like the Books, but all the useless samples are replaced with hook laden twisty pop. And not a single non-song in sight (well, there's one, but it's a short interlude basically). It's the kind of thing I prefer a hundred times as much to the normal Books stuff.
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