04 Same Place The Fly Got Smashed
Introduction
This is the first of the albums that I only listened to properly following my Damascene conversion at the beginning of this year, having by this point in the GBV choronology fully abandoned the 'album a day' Facebook group that I've referred to in previous posts.
The Album
Let's Go!
I said in my previous post that Aerial Nostalgia represented 'the first time that "lo-fi-ness" starts to sound as if it's a deliberate part of the aesthetic' and this approach seems to be firmly embedded with this LP. There's a rough, ragged, '4-track demo recorded in the garage' feel to nearly all of it.
Opener 'Airshow 88' sets the tone: after a 'flick through the channels' introduction à la 'Wish You Were Here', it erupts - after a rallying 'Let's go!' - into a squalling, furious mess of serrated riffing and desperately angry vocals that are discomfortingly tuneless. Whilst the vocals are not quite so angst-ridden elsewhere, they are, in most cases, notably prominent in the mix and drenched in reverb. In the second track, 'Order For The New Slave Trade', for example, Pollard's voice positively booms out over a alternately ponderous and relentlessly grinding backing. It works well, giving the song a dramatically ominous, if rather lop-sided appeal.
Similarly, 'The Hard Way' - for me, the pick of the album - is dominated by an urgent, keening vocal, whilst the guitar, bass and drums are relegated to a subdued, if energetic, grainly smear of fuzz. The lack of balance is disconcerting, but it just works, somehow - not least because of the insistently catchy melody.
A little edge
The album has its quieter, mainly acoustic moments, and they're a little bit of a mixed bag. 'When She Turns 50' is plaintive and pretty, if rather obvious. 'Starboy' is almost jazzy in its delicacy, although a little slight and forgettable. Concluding track 'How Loft I Am?' is engagingly jaunty, but the melody is perhaps a little twee and overly eager to please.
'Drinker's Peace' is the strongest of the more subdued tracks, and is one is one of the best songs on the album overall. Earnest and doleful, the exquisitely melancholy melody is beautifully offset by the slightly out of tune guitar that provides a little edge within the generally soothing mood.
You can dig my grave...
As lovely as 'Drinker's Peace' is, the album is at its best in its more acerbic and aggressive moments. 'Mammoth Cave' - for my money, the second best track - is framed around a muddy, looping chord pattern and features a vocal that throws in rock 'n' roll stylings ('Got my flashlight, two by four'), touching desolation ('Way down deep...') as well as a touch of angsty intensity ('You can dig my grave...')
Like 'Airshow 88', 'Club Molluska' is constructed from nothing but reverb-heavy vocals and distorted guitar and is similarly resolute in its lo-fi-ness. It's simple, direct, and is another track where the vocal flirts with the boundaries of acceptable tunefulness - but is none the worse for that. 'Blatant Doom Trip' is a little more measured in its assertiveness, but still has a murky aggression; the clanging, discordant guitar has a touch of Velvet Underground about it.
52 seconds of your life
Both this album and Self-Inflicted Aerial Nostalgia clearly marked a progression from the first two albums. Consequently, 'Pendulum' is a little bit of an outlier here, as it does sound as if it could have slotted in comfortably to Sandbox. Whilst there's an engaging urgency to the vocal in the chorus, the part with the descending chords is a little clunky, and the verse melody is rather trite. However, although it's one of the weaker songs here, it's certainly not the weakest...
Whilst I found the instrumentals on Devil Between My Toes rather inconsequential, I had yet to encounter a genuinely bad GBV song until I heard 'Ambergris'. It is, frankly, rubbish: a self-indulgent pissing-around studio outtake kind of affair that might be borderline acceptable on a rarities compilation but is ultimately a waste of 52 seconds of your life.
Lyrically, the tone overall is notably dark. Although 'The Hard Way', for example, has a certain uplifting quality musically, lyrically it gets a bit apocalyptic at times: 'The wicked [with] weak feet and tired arms... flail' and 'there's an army marching like stoned ghosts in hell.'
There's also a somewhat dystopian air to 'Order For The New Slave Trade' ('Old flag burning / we've lost our souls / there'll be no returning') in which the narrator is offered a gun by a stranger in a parking lot who says, 'meet me in the ashes of the old city.' This passage is also a little reminscent of Springsteen: not, however, from the 'cars and girls' angle that I made reference to with Sandbox; it's more akin to the gritty urban melodrama approach of 'Jungleland' or 'Incident On 57th Street'. This is also true of 'Local Mix-Up / Murder Charge': 'The pleasure seekers are out there tonight...'; instead of the Magic Rat or Spanish Johnny, we have 'Joker Bob' who is 'razor close like brill-cream gelatin / icy cold acid in his heart' and ends up in the electric chair.
'Local Mix-Up / Murder Charge' is an interesting track. By GBV standards, it's an epic, sprawling, almost prog-like affair: you can't fault it for ambition, and there's some appealing solo guitar and wah-wah going on, although some of the transitions are a little awkward and jarring.
Elsewhere, 'Drinker's Peace' is almost unrelentingly depressive - 'At times I wish I were dead... I find it hard to even care' - although it does strike an optimistic note that signals redemption through a positive relationship: 'My life is dirt but you seem to make it cleaner... when I feel sick you're an antibiotic.' 'Mammoth Cave' is also tinged with darkness and despair - 'Way down deep in the darkest hole / Lost my way, lost my soul' - as is 'Blatant Doom Trip', with its 'bottomless hole' refrain. The lyric of 'Airshow '88' matches the terrifyingly belligerent vocal delivery: 'The smell was overwhelming for the carnivore / packed in like wet cement, frozen with fear.' Even in its less abstract moments ('slowly out of frustration / we began drinking to forget about our jobs') it's filled with furious vexation.
In Conclusion...
With Self-Inflicted Aerial Nostalgia, I said that, unlike the first two albums, it 'didn't sound like an LP that anyone else could have recorded,' and there's still very much a sense of that here. I went on to say that Fly's predecessor had 'a "sound"... that's almost grasped but not quite attained.' That 'sound' is more confidently realised here: this album has a palpable identity; it signals a firming up of the methodology.
What it lacks - just a little - is the variety of Aerial, which also had the occasional lightness of touch and subtlety that isn't quite as prevalent here. On a more simplistic level, I'd argue that it has a slightly lower hit-rate in terms of basically strong tunes - something that's reflected in the smaller proportion of songs that made it onto my 'best of' playlist.
Added to the 'GBV Favourites' playlist:
- Order For The New Slave Trade
- The Hard Way
- Drinker's Peace
- Mammoth Cave
Album rank:
1. 7.6 Self-Inflicted Aerial Nostalgia
2. 7.1 Same Place The Fly Got Smashed
2. 7.0 Sandbox
3. 6.6 Devil Between My Toes
Other News
- My wife and I are not habitual TV viewers. However, we are both partial to the occasional epsiode of an old sitcom, and have recently been watching Scrubs. And what should pop up the other night but 'Hold On Hope' (which my better half thinks 'sound like Oasis').
- Having posted this discovery on the Facebook group (knowing full well that virtually everybody there would already be aware of it), I discovered that GBV also featured in How I Met Your Mother ('I Am A Scientist' appears in season 3, episode 5, apparently, although I can't find it online - I'm led to believe that 'Glad Girls' has also been used).
- In addition, Mr Pollard has also made an appearance in Gilmore Girls (which I've never watched, but my wife is a big fan).
- I've previously posted about my first GBV merch purchases, and included a photo of me wearing one of the two t-shirts I bought. I'm sure you've all been eagerly awaiting a picture of me in the other one, so here it is:
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