Rochdale by LA? Yep, it really happened.
Song: Insult Song
Album: Reformation Post-TLC
Year: 2007
This sounds like an elaborate injoke and also sounds like a biblical tale, truly strange. MES is putting on what I presume is an American accent, but soon drops it as he collapses in laughter at some of his own lines, he also drops it just before the story turns to Rochdale (where the album was recorded) from an LA location.
The Beefheart influence here is so obvious I feel stupid mentioning it, he is doing a Beefheart impression and the music sounds a bit scattershot in that same style, it moves to an even more fevered pitch later on. I wouldn't mind seeing this live, but I doubt it would ever happen, seems like an album folly to me.
The way the lines are read out is so prose, it's almost a Jackanory sort of vibe, sadly, the majority is nonsense, but I love the way he cracks up during the lines: 'We thought they wore masks/Until we asked them to take them off/They took the trout replica a bit too far' and laughs in a childish way about the town names of Nobend and Ramsbottom.
Some of it sounds a bit evangelist, he shouts the end of some lines in the way enthusiastic preachers do, the lines like: 'Following their leader blindlessly and obeying in all goodness/The long trail to the Lancashire hilltops/Happy in their fulfilment' actually sound like they have come from scripture, the overly formal and strange syntax gives it that mystical edge.
I presume Elena didn't mind being called a hydra and the Americans didn't mind joining in the joke, it's good MES has a sense of humour, elsewhere on this album he is quite serious and acerbic.
The bassline that wanders over this track sounds to me like The Breeders song Cannonball, anyone else get that? One thing MES has always managed to get, a decent bass sound, something which a hell of a lot of bands neglect these days.
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