BETTIE SERVEERT: LOG 22 (2003)
1) Wide Eyed Fools; 2) Smack;
3) Have A Heart; 4) Captain Of Maybe; 5) De Diva; 6) Given; 7) Not Coming Down;
8) Cut 'n' Dried; 9) Log 22; 10) White Dogs; 11) Certainlie; 12) The Ocean, My
Floor; 13) The Love-In.
After Private
Suit had changed their image, but failed to make them superstars, Bettie
Serveert took a two-year break — only to return with an album that sounded almost like a retreat to their original
image. Almost, because Dollo's law says that you cannot really go back to the exact same state as you were, so Log 22 is still notoriously «artsier»
than Palomine, and for Bettie, this
means «probably better». Its major problem may be excessive length — a whole hour
— but on the other hand, some of its better songs are its longer pieces, where the real juicy pieces of musical meat
are to be found in the jam sections, so...
But all in due time. In reality, the band
explores quite a few different styles here. The first song is technically one
of those stream-of-consciousness rants from Carol that used to be pretty
boring, but now they have mastered the art of funky rhythmics and economical,
broken-up strings of notes as riffs (somebody must have been on a Television kick
recently), which makes the song's verse melody more interesting than the far
more generic alt-rock all-out-loud chorus (that one could just as well be
produced by the likes of Avril Lavigne). Then the second song is the brief,
two-minute-long explosive punch of ʽSmackʼ — distorted guitars, pop hooks, whistling,
and a Weezer attitude that we'd never heard from this band so far. Then the
third song is... well, looks like a good old draggy B.S. shuffle, but this
time, all smothered in horns, in search for some sort of Van Morrison-style epicness.
Not particularly inspiring, but interesting.
All of which means that the extended holiday
period got them prepped up for «search» mode, and that is at least better than
wallow in the original formula, which was boring from the start and would only
get more boring when put on endless repeat. The album still sags in the middle,
with ʽDe Divaʼ being particularly irritating — going from jangle to distortion
and back while Carol delivers a lengthy pretentious rant on herself as "a
walking inconsistency". The song wants to be a confessional, but in
reality it is self-aggrandizing for no good reason, and I get no extra respect
for Carol just from learning that she is supposed to be "De Diva in
denial", even presuming that I have
guessed correctly what is meant by that (and if I haven't, it's not my fault).
But somewhere around the title track, which
manages to transcend generic alt-rock with some clever guitar tricks from
Peter, things begin to get better, and the album arguably reaches its peak with
the two jam-extended epics — ʽWhite Dogsʼ and ʽThe Ocean, My Floorʼ. The former
is one of the band's most obvious tributes to the Velvet Underground (Carol
once again sings in her best Lou Reed impression and plays all the right rhythm
chords from the Lou Reed songbook), but it honestly sounds like the band is
having good clean fun, and Visser plays his heart out on the extended section,
totally getting in the groove as if the spirit of Lou himself, or of Robert Quine,
at the least, had suddenly descended on him.
As for ʽThe Oceanʼ, its final section is also
an extended jam, but carried out from a completely different angle — psychedelic
rather than avantgarde, with a complex pattern of overdubs that speeds past you
like a multi-colored mushroom field. This is the band's first serious
experiment with «trippy» music, and while it is completely unoriginal, it works
surprisingly well, showing a level of hi-tech sophistication that the early
albums did not even hint at. For about four minutes, the mushrooms explode and
the acid flows over our heads like crazy. This could have been a fine coda to
the album — but then, in a ʽHer Majestyʼ-style paroxysm of self-deflating, they
prefer to round things up with a self-consciously silly retro-disco throwaway
that they title ʽThe Love-Inʼ: two and a half minutes of «body muzak» for the
nostalgic proto-hipster.
Consequently, the album deserves a thumbs up
despite its more than obvious flaws — upon first listen, I hated it for the
excessive length and also because it seemed to turn them back in the direction
of Dust Bunnies. But it is more like
a synthesis of Private Suit with Dust Bunnies and a whole lot of
additional approaches. It is not cohesive, it makes relatively little sense and
is not at all innovative, but there's also something to be said about general
smartness, unpredictability, and professionalism — particularly
professionalism, which seems to have properly arrived at the band's disposal on
Private Suit and is not really going
anywhere, unless they all go on a heroin binge or start touring in support of
local politicians.
"start touring in support of local politicians."
ReplyDeleteDon't provide Dutch politicians with "innovative" ideas, will you?