03 Self-Inflicted Aerial Nostalgia
The third GBV album marked the (in retrospect, disappointingly early) point at which I bailed out of the 'album a week' Facebook group I was briefly involved with during lockdown. I do have a few notes from the time, but this one is more fully written from a post-conversion point of view...
The Album
Part of the strategy....
To the casual listener, GBV are best known for their prolificacy, Fall-like myriad of line-up changes and, as their Wikipedia page puts it, 'lo-fi aesthetic'. The last of these characteristics is the interesting aspect here: whilst neither Devil nor Sandbox sounded as if they had more than a minimal recording budget, this is the first time that 'lo-fi-ness' starts to sound as if it's a deliberate part of the aesthetic. There's a sense here that the distortion, fuzziness and hiss are part of a strategy rather than being the result of of material restrictions.
'Slopes Of Big Ugly', for example, is framed around a pulsing, tuberous bass line that sounds as though it's being picked up accidentally from a rehearsal studio next door. The skittering, droning guitar parts have an air of in-studio improvisation about them. This is also the case with 'The Qualifying Remainder', which spends the first half of its three minutes ambling about in an engagingly fractured fashion before eventually solidifying into a jagged, belligerent rant about 'melting snails' and 'Asian (ancient?) bottles'.
Charmingly hamfisted...
There's much less REM influence here, although you can still hear a bit of it in the forceful arpeggio and choppy chords of 'Short On Posters' - for me, the pick of the songs here. It also has a hint of the rock 'n' roll / Buddy Holly vocals used occasionally on Sandbox as well as a touch of Springsteen ('On the street where we lived / In the land that we knew').
The other highlights are 'Chief Barrel Belly', which, unlike much of the album, features assertive, prominent drumming; more importantly, it exhibits a raw, abandoned energy largely absent from the first two LPs. 'An Earful O' Wax' mixes measured, downbeat melancholy with poppy hooks and is rounded off with a deliciously wiggly showboating guitar solo. The shifts in dynamics - plus the rather odd 'underwater vocals' passage give it a bit of prog-like feel. This is also true of the endearingly goofy 'Radio Show', with its layered vocals and charmingly hamfisted reversed sections.
'The Great Blake Street Canoe Race' owes a little to The Byrds, and the strident closing section works well, although the vocal does feel a little stretched at times. 'White Whale' and 'Trampoline' are both solid efforts: the former is an enthusiastic stomp punctuated by capering chords; the latter is a little more meditative and has rabble-rousing air similar to the previous album's 'Jim Crow' and 'Common Rebels'.
Potentiality and growth....
'The Future Is In Eggs' makes for a curious opener. Much darker in tone than the rest of album, it's shadowy and malevolent, emphasised by the miltary nature of the subdued, pulsing march of the drums and the regular rifle crack of a dampened chord. The sinister atmosphere is heightened by the mumbled, often hard to distinguish vocal. It's understandable that this interpretation is peppered with question marks.
[Side note: having been writing in earnest about music for a few years now, I've noticed how frequently one person's crack at transcribing a lyric - no matter how erroneous or inconclusive - spreads across the internet. The one in the link above is a case in point: you can find it casually copied and pasted at such illuminating sites as Lyricsondemand.com, Songlyrics.com and Lyricsmode.com]
My 'no research' rule, as you may have already noticed, is not a hard and fast one, and I'm certainly not averse to looking up lyrics that are challenging to discern. Whilst looking for a decent transcription of 'Eggs', I couldn't help my eye being caught by a blog post entitled 12 Best Songs about Eggs (the fact that a recent post from the author is called 45+ Best Songs About Change: Powerful Tracks for Transformation and has an Eric Clapton song at number one probably tells you all you need to know about where he's coming from). This blog observes that this GBV track has 'a theme of potentiality and growth, perhaps reflecting on the direction and possibilities that lie ahead.' Hmmm...
News is not news...
There are certainly echoes of the militaristic motif in the words: 'Kids in Cub Scout suits who crushed with marching army boots' suggests the Hitler Youth, and there's perhaps a reference to the Holocaust in 'pushed his way into the chamber... come one and all to the execution.'
Overall, whilst it would be a tad unjust to dismiss Sandbox as being merely all about cars and girls, it's certainly the case that the lyrics take a considerably more thoughtful and abstract turn here. 'Canoe Race's jaded meditation on the mundanity of everyday life ('Rushing through time...I guess I'll go on with my sad and troubled ways') contains - given that we are in the age of 'fake news' - the rather prescient line, 'News is not news / learn something old every day.'
'Navigating Flood Regions' seems to be some sort of pirate adventure ('cast your soul into the jagged sea'); 'White Whale', you might imagine, takes its inspiration from Moby Dick, but either it's too long since I read the novel or the lyric is too oblique for me to pin that down with any confidence. Elsewhere, there are journeys into what feels like pure abstraction: as well as the references to melting snails and Asion/ancient bottles, for example, 'The Qualifying Remainder' contains the memorable if impenetrable 'the poets of ears, the fleshy goat / can lurch souls within the snow a steel coat'.
In Conclusion...
Self-Inflicted Aerial Nostalgia is clearly a step forward, especially in terms of its originality. The first two albums were solid but flawed (in different ways), but when I listened to this for the first time I was struck by the sense that this didn't sound like an LP that anyone else could have recorded. There's also a sense that there's a 'sound' here that's almost grasped but not quite attained. From my 'up to English Little League' persepctive, it's clear how this fed into later releases.
Added to the 'GBV Favourites' playlist:
A more than decent showing, with 50% making it into the collection...
- An Earful O' Wax
- White Whale
- Trampoline
- Short On Posters
- Chief Barrel Belly
- Liar's Tale
- Radio Show
Album rank:
1. 7.6 Self-Inflicted Aerial Nostalgia
2. 7.0 Sandbox
3. 6.6 Devil Between My Toes
Other News
- I have worn my other GBV t-shirt (see the previous post), but I haven't got around to taking a picture yet. As I'm sure you're all desperate to see me wearing it, I'll try to include a picture next time.
- I seem to be establishing a 'post a week' sort of rhythm. I hope to maintain this, but I can't promise! (I do get a month off work in the summer, so that may help things along.) This would suggest a completion date of around February/March next year for this phase of the project. Of course, it's now hard to see me not then going on to singles / EPs / rarities, etc...
- As ever, thank you for the interest and support, especially you folks on the Facebook group! See you soon for my views on Same Place the Fly Got Smashed.
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