The Great Depression
Wednesday 16 June @ 12:12:22 |
 by Tom Hallett
You're running down a cold, wet dock, arms waving frantically like an aircraft carrier flagman who's just realized that the jet taking off still has a fuel hose attached to it, screaming in vain at the vague outline of a quickly retreating, sea-bound ship.
You're a hitch-hiker sitting in the passenger seat of a too-clean Ford Econoline van that's barreling down an anonymous freeway in an anonymous state, and you're not turning your head to look at the driver, a flower delivery man, because you've suddenly developed a sick, woozy feeling inside that he's not taking you anyplace good.
You're eight years old, strapped into a wobbly, shaking seat on a rickety, oil-spewing B-52 bomber that's been refurbished and put into use as a cargo plane, and once you finally force yourself to peep out the filthy porthole on your right, you start to notice that numerous nuts, bolts, and screws are coming loose from the fuselage and whipping back into the clouds behind you. You return home from another long, sweat-and-humiliation-filled day at work to a house that feels too quiet, too empty, too lonely the minute you step inside the door—and you know without even looking that he/she's gone, and for good this time...
These are just a few of the situations I can imagine would be perfect scenarios for regional/local electro-rockers The Great Depression's latest, Unconscious Pilot (2003 Princess Records), to provide the background music to. Of course, conversely, the album could also provide a great soundtrack for the characters on the other sides of those mini-vignettes, as well: "The Baltic Sea" could be softly emanating from a speaker in the cozy suite the two lovers escaping that dock, that harbor, those lives, are lying in, gleefully, salaciously entwined and oblivious to the runner's pain and heartbreak.
"The City by Ultralight" would sound as natural as this unnaturally beautiful electronic groove can sound, playing at a sidewalk café as that pristine van of horror glides by with a wicked hiss. Ditto "A Daring Tale of Escape," heard only by the mysterious commander of that ancient sky-fortress through decaying 50-year-old headphones, or "Two Is Fine" eerily emanating from a taxi driver's radio as the one who left you rolls inexorably towards a future that doesn't include you.
"A Daring Tale Of Escape" pours out strong and thick, the acoustic guitar intro recalling traces of both Mary MacGregor's "Torn Between Two Lovers" and Nilsson's version of Fred Neil's "Everybody's Talkin'." "Meet The Habsburgs" lopes along like that legendary chestnut mare, gentle pickin' balanced with squeadles and squiggles of electronic burbling, lickety-split cymbal touches, and barely audible backing vocals. You don't need a lyrical story here to conjure up images of the star-crossed couple you're being introduced to, or the attendant paranoid charm that surrounds them both like some sickly perfumed cloud.
"Violent Goodbyes" comes lurching out of some smoky back room on a bed of bizarre, church-ish keys, tight strumming, and a bass line that's an anthem all by itself: "I been droppin' in again/It's always worth a try," come the lines, and you can almost palpably taste the pain wafting out from the singer's very pores. "It's been awhile since you said/You're just in time." Yeah. It's over, and he knows it as sure as he knows his own broken eyes in the mirror and the bottle they'll be staring into a minute, or an hour, or a lifetime from now: "I can't tell if you're fair and well/Maybe has been implied/What a day to waste away inside...violent goodbyes..."
The instrumental keyboard cut "Andel pro Alyce" evokes waves of powerful nostalgia—both good and bad—that almost overwhelm you on first listen: a snippet of a 17th-century symphony written for a long-dead lover; the funereal music playing at some hip vampire's blood-drenched wedding feast; the sound of a human soul straining, stretching, vainly grasping at the great, empty vastness of the cosmos. All this in 1:52...absolutely phenomenal.
"Ethansled," a surf-y, dreamy taste of what might've happened if Brian Wilson, John Cale and Thom Yorke had spent a long, stoned weekend on some South Pacific island with only mangos, white wine and hashish to provide refreshment, takes you beyond the limits of dreaming awake; a pounding, insistent rhythm like the steady thrum of the sea breaking on the beach, the dizzying swirl of the keys like the bitter taste of an unfaithful lover's lips combining to create a sweet/sour mish-mash that initially repels you and yet, in the end, manages to lure you into its warm, deadly embrace with a promise not quite spoken, so as to never quite be broken.
But "The Sargasso Sea," a stately, regal blast of wistful mod-pop, is the centerpiece of Unconscious Pilot, and the brightest track here. The perfect tune for that first, stomach-knotting meeting of lovers-to-be, the perfect break-up song later, after one or both of their hearts hit that inevitable, invisible wall of apathy and scorn. An alpha/omega, darker-with-the-day, catch-me-if-you-can slice of humanity that's so close to the universal heart that, as soon as it bleeds out of your speakers, you find that you're (to paraphrase here) taking a train headlong right back into it. Don't be surprised to find that there's no place else you'd rather go...
The product of the fevered imaginations (and superb musical skills) of singer/multi-instrumentalist Todd Casper, guitarist Brent Sigmeth (yep, the cat who engineered all those great albums out at Pachyderm Studios in Cannon Falls, where this album was recorded as well, records and mixes his own band here), bassist Todd Cranley, drummer Chadwick Nelson, and keyboard whiz Avedis Manoogian, Unconscious Pilot is more akin to a collection of scary bedtime stories for adults set to music than a "pop" album in the traditional sense of the term. Supported by the angelic backing vocals of Karin Boysen and Laura Hartley, and peppered with spooky keys, haunting melodies, a French horn, and loopy, half-drunk beats, there isn't a song on the album that doesn't perfectly capture a specific emotion, mood, or mind-set; A brilliant melding of precise, 21st century technology and the ageless, timeless miasma of raw human emotion.
Ranging from brittle, edgy electronica to dark, gorgeous mood music to glorious, senses-shattering psycho-drama, the album is literally dangerous to listen to. Once you've entered this beautifully oppressive little fantasy world, you find yourself more and more reluctant to return to whatever your personal reality might be. Kind of like an aural virtual reality game that sinks its hooks into you and pulls you into it so slyly, so gradually, that before you realize it you've become an intricate part of it and it an integral part of you. As you open yourself up to it, you'll find that Unconscious Pilot is a genuine musical opiate, and a triumphant, shimmering set of music to live, love, lose and spiritually reincarnate to.
The only drawback here is that, like a musical version of a classic episode of “Alfred Hitchcock Presents” or “The Ray Bradbury Theater,” U.P. (clocking in at 40 minutes) is over way too quickly. Thankfully, you can just reach out past that full ashtray and half-gone glass of mind lotion and hit "play" as many times as you want to. As Casper croons in the album's final track, "The Advents," "(Somewhere) there is a planet/filled with people trying to get off it..." you won't find a more suitable record for your musical companion as you cruise your own inner galaxies searching for that home you've never known. Two opposable digits up, way up, for The Great Depression.
That's it for me this week, gang. Tune in next time 'round for more reviews, news and sticky stuff on the bottom of yer shoes. Until we meet again—make yer own damn news.
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