This song, I think, was the most ambitious premise yet. We took a poster of mine—an extensive chart of guitar chords—and wrote the names of the chords onto pieces of paper. We threw the pieces of paper into a hat, mixed them around, and we each drew three or four of them. The challenge was to record our parts using only the chords on the pieces of paper. The premise was inspired in large part by Oulipian writers like Harryette Mullen.
It was a daunting task because the chords were by no means in the same key, and many of them were weird, obscure jazz chords that were difficult to play anyway, let alone fit together in some semblance of order.
By the time we’d recorded the song and Chas had left, the song was in sad shape. Like “Marital Dischord,” the song was only a random assemblage of wave files—wave files that seemed to bear no relationship to one another. By the time I’d finished the mixing, the end result was a strange, gothy, industrial song. I had just bought an e-bow, so I used it to give the song a big and driving sound.
This song continues the theme of materialism, including the best Buzzsaw chorus yet, a line Chas came up with: “Satan’s talking through the walls/ And all I can do is sell a kitchenette.” Seriously fucking brilliant.
In this song, right after Elvis Was a Freemason, is another one of my favorite lyric lines: “Stack the ages/ With faceless Shapefuls/ Nobody knows how/ Safety sending/ Patent pending/ Our moments die in unmarked graves.” That’s some eerie shit.
Chas says:
If there was a song in this project that I was pretty sure would fail, it was this one. However, Jake did an amazing job completing it and transforming it into a goth/industrial tune. I didn’t see that coming, and I love it.
The rule of the night: Jake has a poster of guitar chords. We wrote them all down, put them in a hat, and randomly drew chords. After recording several different parts, we found the ones that worked together, and deleted the rest.
The lyrics were a combination of watching Larry the Cable Guy and Jeff Dunham (I think they’re both pretty terrible) while flipping through a pictoral interpretation of Thomas Pynchon’s Gravity’s Rainbow. You know, a typical day.
lyrics
Supersonic blandness in the face of madness
Samurai sadness has got us wanting more
Ooh that’s nice
Satan’s talking through the walls
and all I can do is sell a kitchenette
Stuck in endless greetings love’s repeating
The devil’s in the fine print wanting more
Stack the ages
Faceless shapefuls
Nobody knows how
Patent pending
Safety sending
Our moments die in unmarked graves
Boston band featuring members of Have Heart and Basement take their earnest, motivational post-hardcore to thrilling new heights. Bandcamp New & Notable Aug 23, 2023
