Published on Mar 21, 2003
I remember the time around March of 2002 when I suffered a minor
anxiety attack. That was the first time I had heard that the
hard-rock heroes from Norway, Gluecifer, were releasing their fifth
studio album,
Basement Apes, on Sony Records in Scandinavia
(SPV/Steamhammer rest of Europe) with a far greater pocketbook than
the band’s independent labels of the past. I also recall that
anxiety attack ratcheting up a bit when I heard news that Martin
Hederos of pop-rockin’ Soundtrack of Our Lives fame and the quirky
Cato Salsa would be guest artists on the release performing piano
and organ duties. Ack!! Any true Gluecifer fan would have done a
similar double-take as piano’s and organ’s mix with the trademark
Gluecifer rock sounds like the proverbial oil-and-water
concoction.
For the uninitiated listener, Gluecifer have always sat on the
“rock throne” on past releases; this proclamation was cleverly
documented in a song of the same name on their second album,
Ridin’ The Tiger. So maybe, just maybe, all I needed was
just a valium. Surely this album would not be a letdown.
So, were my fears founded or not? Well, of the first few tracks
on the disc, “Reversed” and “Brutus” play like any of the tracks on
the previous album,
Tender Is The Savage. Upbeat songs with vocalist Biff Malibu
on the verge of hitting his traditional fever pitch in parts of the
songs, conspicuously looping bass lines brought to us by Stu Manx,
and a dual guitar frenzy on the second song by lead guitarists
Captain Poon and Raldo Useless. Excellent!
And then the bottom begins to fall out. In hearing “Losing End”
for the first time, I picture Biff having pulled up a stool in the
recording studio as he orchestrates the vocals on this song in a
first gear type of sing-a-long. If one wants to discount this
thought as being petty since musicians are often moved to try and
do new things, keep my analogy in mind when you hear “Little Man”
deeper into the album.
As I heard the band’s first released single and fourth track
“Easy Living” for the first time, I could not get over the fact
that Biff tells us that he’s done with the easy living 28 times, by
my count, in a song that clocks in at just three minutes. I find
this just plain strange, as Biff has typically told his audience so
much more in ways far more clever than this repetitive monologue.
By contrast, instrumentally this song hits on all cylinders as
described in the previous commentary.
After this, the album truly breaks down into a bunch of slickly
recorded tracks that appear to aim at capturing a new breed of
fans. These are songs that a new listener of the band might not shy
away from, but that lack the attitude and emotion of everything the
band has put into past recordings. In the end,
Basement Apes is truly a mixed bag of songs — a few
throwback rockers, a few songs that are truly pop fluff, and a few
tracks that putter along at speeds barely more daring than an
acoustic number.
So, whereas Gluecifer may have sung about 455-horsepower engines
on full bed frames in the past (“Under My Hood”),
Basement Apes ends up sounding like little more than a
sputtering four-cylinder on the highway.