I had to go back to re-read my comments on The Modern Dance because, while I remembered listening to the album, and that it was some experimental oddness, I couldn’t remember any particular tracks. And having read my notes – I still couldn’t.
So, that’s what we’re dealing with here. Tracks that are experimental and lack the usual kind of easy hook, more about the disparate elements that are used to make the music rather than songs. There’s something of a Captain Beefheart feel going on here, mainly due to David Thomas’s overly-emphatic and chaotic singing style, but it’s still more coherent than Trout Mask Replica.
In fact, there’s some good music underneath the oddness. Drinking Wine Spodyody has a good groove to it, and Ubu Dance Party turns into a chaotic kind of tribal dance. On The Surface has a bit of a sea shanty feel, continued thematically in the next track Dub Housing with its chorus of “Hey, hey, boozy sailors”. Codex has some folky guitar elements (that remind me of the Fire Dance from The Wicker Man soundtrack) but is a dark and nightmarish “love” song that becomes very obsessive - “I think about you all the time”.
Other times the experimentalism takes over. Thriller! isn't the Michael Jackson track, but a bit of musique concrete, while Blow Daddy-O is the soundscape of abandoned industry, sharp, bleak, and evocative.
As with The Modern Dance I’m glad such things exist and that there is room in the world for avant-garde strangeness, but this is probably not an album I’d rush back to (although there are some tracks I’d be willing to spend the time to acquire the taste for).
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