CAMPER VAN BEETHOVEN: II & III (1986)
1) Abundance; 2) Cowboys From
Hollywood; 3) Sad Lovers' Waltz; 4) Turtlehead; 5) I Love Her All The Time; 6)
No Flies On Us; 7) Down And Out; 8) No Krugerrands For David; 9) (Don't You Go
To) Goleta; 10) 4 Year Plan; 11) (We're A) Bad Trip; 12) Circles; 13) Dustpan;
14) Sometimes; 15) Chain Of Circumstance; 16) ZZ Top Goes To Egypt; 17) Cattle
(Reversed); 18) Form Another Stone; 19) No More Bullshit.
The title of this album is first and foremost
intended to look cool, but also reflects some objective truth, considering that
about half of it was recorded while drummer Anthony Guess was still in the band
(and new guitarist Greg Lisher had just joined), and the other half was made
after the drummer's departure, with Molla and Lowery splitting the drum work
between themselves (permanent replacement Chris Pedersen only arrived in time
to record one track, the rough garage-rocker ʽ(We're A) Bad Tripʼ).
In all honesty, though, Camper Van Beethoven is
more about the collective spirit than individual personalities, and we are not
going to be seriously tracing all the complicated comings and goings here — the
only thing that matters is whether they affect that spirit or not, and II & III, by all accounts, remains
unaffected. Not that it sounds like a copy of the debut: on the contrary, there
are some serious changes made, as the band largely abandons the «remake
everything as a ska groove» principle, and branches out into additional
directions; anything goes, as long as it's got good rhythm and as long as you
can put a slightly weird spin on it.
The only problem is that this time around,
there's no seeming conceptual unity to the recordings at all — all you can do
is fondly enjoy its light-hearted attitude and fish out occasional moments of
musical brilliance. Two songs only go for some sort of social message, one of
them doing so brilliantly (the abovementioned ʽBad Tripʼ, a sneering putdown of
those who "live such bright and flashing lives" with top-notch energy
and a classic neo-garage riff) and the other not so brilliantly (ʽNo More
Bullshitʼ — a last-minute outburst of sloganeering is not going to save the
day, even if you happen to agree with the song's sentiments such as "no
more MTV, no more rock stars... Elvis Presley died and no one knows why!";
musically, the song sounds like somebody took a sonic experiment off Captain
Beefheart's Trout Mask Replica and
normalized it — well, okay, but it does not agree so perfectly with the verbal
message). The rest is a smorgasbord of pop, folk, country, psychedelia, punk,
and yes, just a little bit of ska... actually, more of a Slavonic dance, as
corroborated by its prominent «mandolaika» lead part and the telling title ʽ4
Year Planʼ (I guess 5-year plans were too much to handle for a band with this
much impatience).
Again, though, the most musically brilliant
pieces are those instrumentals on which Segel's violin gets top billing — ʽNo
Krugerrands For Davidʼ is a mad send-up of Jewish dance music, but my personal
favorite is ʽZZ Top Goes To Egyptʼ, where near-Eastern violin lines are
psychedelically spiced up with echo effects and placed on top of a bluesy vamp
that, honestly, does not sound much like ZZ Top, but then I'm not really sure who the hell it sounds like, so might as
well be ZZ Top. Other instrumentals are not nearly as interesting; for
instance, ʽDustpanʼ is sort of what you'd expect a basic punk-rock song to
sound like if the chainsaw buzz was replaced with bursts of acoustic jangle —
an idea that seems intriguing in theory, but turns out boring in practice. However,
check out the excellent ʽTurtleheadʼ: seventy-five seconds of a crazyass
country-punk-noise hybrid with unexpected time, tone, and mood shifts around
every corner, a track that even ends up having a distinctly King Crimson-ian
feel to it while it lasts.
Of the remaining vocal numbers, Sonic Youth's
ʽI Love Her All The Timeʼ, remade as a rollickin' bluegrass number, deserves
some attention for the novelty factor; ʽChain Of Circumstanceʼ is an attempt at
twee-pop, ruined by bad vocals; and ʽForm Another Stoneʼ might be an overlooked
psychedelic masterpiece from these guys — parodic as it is, the violin parts,
laced with echo and phasing effects, wind themselves around the guitar jangle
in a decidedly mind-blowing fashion. But even so, brilliance and senselessness
go hand in hand on the album: for every winner, there's a relative loser, and
overall, a bit of quality control probably wouldn't hurt. I appreciate, for instance,
that the violin on ʽSad Lovers' Waltzʼ occasionally ends up reproducing the
violin lines on the Beatles' ʽDon't Pass Me Byʼ, but the song as a whole does
nothing for me, either as a sincere country number or as parody, whatever.
In short, II
& III might as well be subtitled The
Brilliant & The Pointless, a record that, far more so than the debut,
highlights the band's virtues and flaws. Listening to this, you get the feeling
that they could have easily done a great «serious» album in some sort of
country-punk style — but chose the humble-pretentious path of self-deflation
and reckless branching out with no particular place to go instead. If they were
the Beatles and this was their White
Album, they might get away with it, but I'll still take ʽWild Honey Pieʼ
over ʽDustpanʼ, because the art of painting evocative musical pictures with
musical trifles is a dang hard art to do well, and Camper Van Beethoven do it
well... well, about 45% of the time. Which is still darn impressive for a
mid-Eighties Californian band, so an honest thumbs up it is anyway.
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