best albums of 2014: #10

 clarke & the himselfs II (happy family/heart in box recordings/curly cassettes)

it’s mesmerizing to see clarke pull these songs off live. if the chords sound simple and effects driven on the recording, well they are, but consider this is one guy with a reverb pedal, guitar, kick drum, cymbal, and tomtom, who strums the guitar with the drum stick in between beats. it’s a mind trip, incomprehensible even while witnessing it. without that, the music and it’s lyrical equivalent either speak a comprehensible language or they don’t. for someone that grew up with a passion for suicidal tendencies because they spoke hard truths and provided an outlet that a sheltered and lost soul could relate to, i see clarke espousing a similar guiding insight, even if his songs are depressing enough to make listeners with beating hearts seek professional help. as his own songs will testify, hiding from horror doesn't make it go away. there is a lot to learn from in tragedy, and to deny that knowledge by only wanting to see the sunny side of life is more maddening than the horrors themselves.

toxic world is the hit song. it brings the most crowd engagement and sells everything at the merch booth. sludge is about as toxic as anything. it can’t easily be cleaned up, nor do those responsible for it have to deal with the dirty work. toxic sludge is the by-product of everything we have been born inheriting. the song untitled also appears to blame an elder figure for producing the environment when they knew better. the only distraction in either song is love, even if that is just as toxic. clarke makes an attempt for it at toxic world’s end, but if the other songs are indicative the outcome is fruitless even when finding love.

railbug, is a terribly horrifying title, much less for the song to kick off the cassette. it does start hopeful by looking for new beginnings, via train hopping, via astral trips, but the means won’t matter to a person transfixed on loss. the result of the negative position can only bring hopeless feelings of what one cannot attain. thus, a "railbug" is the inevitable outcome. at least four songs on the cassette appear to have the person of desire commit suicide. there is a lot of presumption on my part. poetry is already slippery enough, but it’s even harder to understand the guy through the reverb on the mic and the bandcamp site only has lyrics to four songs. besides, maybe i read too much into these things, but the depth of the feelings beg to be probed.

the cassette format somehow also forwards the primal concerns. and man, i love my cassette deck. the cover art is interesting in considering the toxic world. there are no less than 119 historical figures in the collage. if you can name even one-fourth of them, i’ll trust you to captain my spaceship.