The bigger question: Are we just Meat Machines?

 I don't know that I have hidden my attraction to odd and quirky music particularly well - it is indeed true. One of my favorite musicians is Les Claypool, bassist and singer in Primus - as well as a host of other side projects: Colonel Les Claypool's Fearless Flying Frog Brigade (their cover of Pink Floyd's Animals album is spectacular), Duo De Twang (Stayin' Alive never sounded more redneck), Oysterhead (with Stewart Copeland of Police fame and Trey Anastasio from Phish - all three of them are really institutions in themselves), and, finally (although this list is not extensive), The Claypool Lennon Delirium. Les Claypool is the unlikeliest of frontmen - he has a well-cultivated quirky look, often enhanced with costumes and masks, he has a nasal voice that for some is a very acquired taste, especially when singing, and if any bassist ever strutted around on stage, it is him. But it works. It works because of a history of being self-effacing (the chant of love for Primus fans is "Primus sucks"), a nerdy approach to both instrument and lyrics, and a genuine likability that you can't put a price tag on (check out Geddy Lee's Paramount show Bass Players Are Human Too - the episode with Les Claypool is fantastic and showcases a personality that is as free from artifice as you can get (unless I simply buy the hype and he has me completely fooled (and yes, I know that parentheses inside parentheses are not proper writing - but as long as I put enough closing parentheses, you know what I mean (thank you Excel for the many lessons in nested parentheses)))).

There is no accident that I was able to bring in Geddy Lee when I talk about Les Claypool. Claypool is a die-hard Rush fan, and Primus even went on tour playing Rush's seminal A Farewell To Kings album (part of a stretch of albums that really defined their career, starting with 2112 and to me running through Grace Under Pressure, although most Rush fans would probably end it with Moving Pictures) in its entirety. I can also recognize some of Lee's bass tone in Claypool's bass - when he plays it more traditionally. But Les Claypool isn't about tradition - he is about invention and pushing the instrument further. His combination of the funky slap style from the 70s and 80s, a chordal approach to his playing, and speed and agility on his runs (Wikipedia also suggests a flamenco influence) is completely his own. While John Entwistle may have played the bass as a solo instrument and Geddy Lee and John Paul Jones filled out a ton of space to support guitar work that sometimes was ethereal, Les Claypool combines that - but also finds a way to fill the sonic landscapes with lush cascades of runs, chords, and, yes, melody. And when he started out, nobody approached the bass even close to how he did. 

In the mid 2010s, he paired up with Sean Ono Lennon and formed The Claypool Lennon Delirium, and their approach to what Lennon labeled "progadelica" fits Claypool's quirkiness and the ethereal tone of Lennon's voice. Their music ranges from songs sounding like Danny Elfman's The Nightmare Before Christmas (Troll Bait) to trippy prog (Boomerang Baby, South of Reality), to more straight up psychedelia (Amethyst Realm). They have released three albums: Monolith of Phobos (2016), South Of Reality (2019), and just recently, The Great Parrot-Ox And The Golden Egg Of Empathy, and I love all three of them. You can clearly hear Claypool's influence all over them, but it is equally clear that Lennon has his own musical vision here as well. He is a solid guitarist, but to me, it is the voice he brings - and a sense of melody that clearly harkens back to that very famous band from the 60s. But I will not dwell on his heritage here, because Sean Ono Lennon stands very competently on his own two feet. And paired up with Claypool, we get a combination of two great but distinctively different musical approaches, much like Pink Floyd had in Gilmour/Waters and that other band had in Lennon/McCartney. Here, Lennon has the melodic and fluid style of Gilmour and McCartney, while Claypool is the counterpart bringing an edge (or, more accurately in this case quirkiness (yes, I like the word a lot (what is it with me and nested parentheses today?))) similarly to Waters and Lennon in the aforementioned songwriting pairs.

On the album The Great Parrot-Ox And The Golden Egg Of Empathy, there is one track that just has etched itself onto my brain like a Nerve Tattoo (thank you, Motorpsycho), and that is the song Meat Machines. It has a long synthesized intro for a little over a minute before the guitar comes in - and then there is Claypool's bass anchoring it all with a tone right from Geddy Lee's playbook. It is filled with treble, which really makes it pop, but when the pre-chorus sets in, the rich bottom appears as well. It may not be earthshatteringly original when it comes to the melody, but it is wonderfully constructed, and even more so, it is wonderfully written, both musically and lyrically. It asks the question "is there more to us?" - "are humans nothing more than meat machines?" It is filled with standout lines, like "It's such a very precarious line between stoned and petrified" and "when you can't see the maze you're in, how can you escape it?" It asks many big questions - and what I love is that it doesn't try to answer them. And I would argue that this is a case of asking the questions itself is answering them. 

The Return of the Sporadic Writer: Shush

 It's been a long time again. Luckily, this time I didn't have to reopen the site - or I wasn't met with a "Tore doesn't live here anymore" message the way I was the last time I popped back in. I always have plans. Great plans. And then life pops in and gets in the way. But this time, there has been so many great releases. So many. And some of them were surprise drops as well. But I want to start with an old favorite of mine. Tori Amos. And no, it's not because there is only a vowel difference in our first names. It is because I have been genuinely moved by here latest album, In Times Of Dragons.

In the beginning of her career, with albums like Little Earthquakes and Under The Pink (I am choosing to ignore Y Kant Tori Read - although it is charming in its way), she really moved me. Massively so. But sometime after Boys For Pele, I lost the connection I had to her music. I loved From The Choirgirl Hotel, but I don't remember much of it. It didn't stick the same way the first three albums had. And To Venus and Back really didn't click. Then I loved Strange Little Girls, the collection of cover songs, including Slayer's Raining Blood - although I have to admit that some of her choices for arrangements were pretty far out there. 

So I lost touch with her music for a while, but around the time of the album Native Invader from 2017, I started picking up her music again. The time was right for me to explore the 16 year gap, more or less, and it revealed good albums. Not stellar, to me, but good. Ocean To Ocean followed, and I caught her on tour for the first time. Needless to say, I loved the show - and not even a boot on her broken foot slowed her down. 

But In Times Of Dragons is to me an album that brings me back to the old days. This time, again, she has something to say, and she's not afraid to speak her mind. From an artistic point of view, I have always been a huge proponent of "show, don't tell," but these days, subtlety gets lost in the constant roar of what Tori Amos unabashedly label the patriarchy. She hits hard this time. Her words are direct. They are political. They are charged. And she is unapologetic. The lyrics in Shush make clear just how she feels: "Southern girls know what it means/when the patriarchy menacingly says/you shush yourself now."

And then there is the music. The piano churns out bass heavy chords, slogging along at a pace that is heavy. So very heavy. We feel the weight of what she is singing about. Her right-hand hits lighter notes - there is a sprinkling of treble notes as well. But there is very little light that is shining through. 

And then there is the added weight of the final lines: "I knew a girl who wrote/'Silent All These Years'/Where is she." And on those notes, those words, the song ends. Having followed her embrace and empowerment of femininity since the beginning, those words, with the callback to Silent All These Years, hit hard. And that sets the tone for the rest of the album. This is prime Tori Amos. This is greatness. This is one of the greatest female voices of all time. This is what you NEED to listen to!