Schnipper’s Slept On
- story THE FADER
Each Tuesday, FADER editor Matthew Schnipper highlights an underappreciated recent release he thinks we need to know about. This week it’s Wild Beasts’ Limbo, Panto. Download an acoustic version of “The Devil’s Crayon” below (but make sure you check the regular version, too, Freeloader), buy the record and read Schnipper’s thoughts on it after the jump.
Download: Wild Beasts, “The Devil’s Crayon (Acoustic Version)”
You know those things that happen and you just know no one will care? Like a 44-year-old mystery novelist by trade writes his first hefty piece of fiction and it’s called An Attempt at Endeavoring and he hires a publicity firm and maybe you even see the guy on CBS’ Early Show and you are watching and he’s got a toupee and a goatee and is wearing a forest green polo shirt even though it’s December. And you are sure he isn’t sweating—he can’t be sweating, can he? Oh god that would be so awful—but there is the little perspiration touch just below the neckline, just around the armpits. And the NY Times review comes out and Michiko Kakutani wasn’t even deathly with criticism, it was just so lukewarm. You start to think that maybe it would be better to just be terrible, at least then you’d get someone to talk with some fervor. Is there a worse death than a mediocre one? Yeah, that isn’t Wild Beasts at all. So why doesn’t anyone care about them?
I just went back and read Pitchfork’s review of the album. If there is going to be an indie thermometer Pitchfork is certainly that so let’s check their temperature. They didn’t use the word “crazy” one time. See, I think that could be part of the problem because this album is totally crazy. They talked about the lyrics and concepts of vice for half of it. But, dudes, he sings super nuts! I would have also settled for “wild” (no pun intended) or “completely ridiculous.” The guy sings like an injured goat. If it was a really sexy goat. And it got injured by its sexy goat lover in a fight.
Ok so I am listening to this album again and I sent an IM to my friend Simon about it because I know he likes it. I listened to a bunch of songs before and now “Devil’s Crayon” came on and without thinking I just said this to him, “Jesus, ‘Devil’s Crayon’ is so good,” because I am compelled to talk about it in really bland but enormously enthusiastic tone. You can hear the music for yourself, go do that! I have to imagine that listening to stuff and deciding for yourself is way sweeter than me telling you about how it feels, right? So my job is to get you worked up enough to actually go listen. Can you just do me a favor and go listen? Here is the video. If you click that it will totally just open another tab on your browser, you can hit play and then come back here and finish watching. So you won’t have to have downloaded anything or do anything weird or bad to your computer. You’re just doing me a personal favor and I work on your behalf so I would appreciate it. Ok cool. Let’s go through the song now:
First 15 seconds: Guitar playing something kind of ’80s meets juju meets Modest Mouse and drums remind me of chopping celery really fast. Totally locked into a groove from the first second, no buildup all power through. Who likes waiting, anyway?
Second 16: You can hear dude gulp for air before he goes in. That is cool, right? It’s a little behind the scenes thing. Who doesn’t like a sneak peak? (The answer is losers.)
Seconds 17-19: Your first taste of his extended fierceness. His voice is totally the winner on Project Runway, if it was about voices, because it’s kind of sassy and not completely polished but is unique and with some fervent and occasionally annoying persistence that it is the best.
Seconds 19-the rest of the song: Everything comes together in a lock groove. It’s like Talking Heads “Naïve Melody” where the guitar loops itself on some hypnosis shit and the vocals do their meander business.
Also there is piano! I didn’t expect piano!
Oh wait also one minute thirty seconds: First time dude goes for the floor tom. Jams! You know that the jams are coming then. It’s like when you go drive on a highway and you see the color orange and even before you process that it’s gonna be some traffic accident type shit ahead of you and that is the person waving you into the next lane you just know you need to put on your turning signal. You know it like you know air and blood and how to walk and sleep and how to grow hair you just know it. Floor tom doesn’t always equal mojo moments but here you know it.
And yeah I think he does say something like “all his children used to kiss.” Who are they kissing? Each other? That’s vaguely weird.
Ok back into it.
Two minutes: When they go into the rock opera part and it is some how not the corniest shit ever? You know how Chris Angel is mega corny and David Blane is magic? It’s like that. BAM (like Emeril)!
The end part: dude soothes you out. You know like when you are reading a story to a baby so the baby goes to sleep and then you are on like page 12 of 17 and you are like “Holy shit baby is totally asleep early” and you are like “Peace I am out of here because I already read Goodnight Moon a million times?” and then you talk yourself out of it real quiet like if you were doing a robbery on a house and the people came home and you realized it was the sheriff’s house (d’oh!) but then you realized the back door was totally wide open and you could slip away into the night undetected and maybe the total thrill of it was just stepping on the carpet and being there and maybe you got to grip some jewelry or maybe you didn’t but you are like “Hey I totally did that and there is just as much joy in it being over and now being a memory as there was in making it?” It’s like that.
Related:
- Wild Beasts Daytrotter Session MP3
- Video: Wild Beasts, “The Devil’s Crayon”
- Schnipper’s Slept On
- Video: Wild Beasts, “All the King’s Men”
- Schnipper’s Slept On
- posted on Mar 10, 2009 in SLEPT ON
- tags rock, Wild Beasts
