Published on Aug 31, 1998
Last week, I was fortunate enough to see Deep Purple in concert.
While waiting outside the will-call window for my backstage passes
with a few other members of the media, a young man walked up to our
group and started talking to us. Michael Howard was his name, and
he just so happened to be in a band who had a demo out. Sure, I
said, I’ll review your band. Just send me your demo… and – bang!
– he pulled out a CD from his waist pouch, the charmingly named
Each It And I. (Say it fast, and you’ll get the hidden
meaning.)
Snothead’s music has been compared by some to the psychedelic
days of Pink Floyd, and it has been suggested that the best way to
listen to some of this music is to get really stoned and slap on
the headphones. Not being into drugs myself (hell, I’ve even given
up caffiene, which was easier than I thought it would be), all I
had available to me were headphones… and I’m starting to believe
that being high is a benefit for some of the music on this disc.
It’s most definitely experimental, some of which work… and some
of which fail.
Of the eight songs on this disc, only half are cuts with any
real vocals. The title track, a tirade against censorship, would
have made the late Frank Zappa proud, and could well be the
strongest song on the disc. (Howard also strikes out against
Wal-Mart, encouraging people not to shop there because they won’t
sell albums with the dreaded “Parental Advisory” sticker. I just
don’t like shopping there because the fuckin’ parking lots are a
three-ring circus, but that’s my own bias.)
What strikes me as odd about
Each It And I is that there is a strong undercurrent of
anger and violence in the music – something I wouldn’t have
expected from an environmental activist. Tracks like “If I Only Had
A Gun” are more controlled, while “Relax” spews venom with a vocal
line delivered like Captain Beefheart in a spoken-word style. The
more I listened to these tracks, the better they got, but it did
take some time and patience to let them develop.
The three “experiments” are the ones that need some work. “Blip”
lives up to its name, a short sound bite that sounds like tape
being slowed down and sped up. But, it’s so short that it’s not
worth really complaining about. The same can’t be said for
“Modulations: Sinister/Devine”, a two-and-a-half-minute pastiche of
noise that sounds like Howard was playing with a digital delay
pedal. It’s incredibly annoying, sounding like he was experimenting
with a new toy to see what it could do with vocals. There are times
that such experiments are best left in the vaults or on the cutting
room floor.
The centerpiece of
Each It And I is “Charlotte’s Web Site,” a song that Howard
insisted I listen to with headphones. It’s indeed bizarre, and some
of the experiments on this one work better than on the previously
mentioned tracks, but it’s still nothing to really write home
about. I will give Howard credit, in that this 10-minute track
didn’t seem to last nearly half as long. I’ve always said, if a
long song seems like it’s short, that’s a good portion of the
battle. What he needs to do now is to put some more substance into
such pieces, instead of indulging in weirdness for weirdness’s
sake.
Each It And I is the first effort of a band in progress.
With a little more work (and a little less reliance on gimmicks
like feedback and delay-rich songs and declarations of being so
psychedelic), Snothead could well be an electronic-based band to
watch in the near future.
Each It And I offers slight glimpses of that, but also shows
that Howard and crew have a lot of work to do.