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Her name is emblazoned with indelible black ink underneath
my sleeve. I’m speaking of course of Lisa, my high school
sweetheart, now my wife—the mother of my offspring and the
warmer of cold feet. On our second wedding anniversary, at
the ripe age of twenty-two, I saw fit to earmark the occasion
by having her name tattooed on my right tricep. The day after
I had it done, I proudly displayed the permanent gesture of
my love for one of my friends, to which he said, “What are
you going to do if things don’t work out?” A simple question,
to which I jokingly replied, “Well, it’s all uppercase old
English letters and from a distance, it looks like it says
USA. I’ll just go back and have them change it to that.”
Even though I was joking, I know that last comment sounds
more than a little jaded and cynical, but nowadays it’s good
to have a fallback plan, right?
Back in the good ole’ days before “happily ever after” became
“happy, until I’m not anymore,” there were no fallback plans.
Back then, you got married and stayed married, for better
or for worse, even if it meant turning a blind eye to little
indiscretions here and there. However, in this modern age
of enlightenment, instant gratification and prenups, love
American style is now disposable. It’s something we try on
for size—seemingly as an affirmation of adulthood—and discard,
like a suit gone out of fashion, when the wide-eyed wonderism
fades. With almost 50% of American marriages ending in divorce—or
worse—most couples feel accomplished if they’ve made it to
their fifth anniversary. Given those statistics, having a
fallback plan doesn’t sound so jaded after all, now does it?
Given that assertion, it’s seems only fitting that David
Bazan, headmaster of Pedro The Lion, frames his new full-length,
Control—a concept album about love and betrayal in
the modern age—with a song about just that, having a fallback
plan, even in the midst of presumed bliss. Bazan unfolds his
latest epic narrative on “Options,” which introduces us to
our protagonist as he's meting out the first of many soliloquizing
quips: "We were walking holding hands, with our bare
feet in the sand and the seagulls overhead/when I broke the
spell and said I could never divorce you without a good reason/and
though I may never have to/it’s good to have options/but for
now, I need you.” over arpeggiated End Serenading-esque
guitar lines, supplemented by Casey Foubert’s (also plays
in Seattle-based, Seldom) sparse yet intuitive bass playing.
On the next track, “Rapture,” (perhaps better known to longtime
fans in its earlier incarnation as “The Millionaire” with
different lyrics) Bazan tackles the allure of a moment of
reckless abandon, versus the profound regret, yet to be realized:
"Finally, a chance to breathe/Reaching for the fallen
sheets, collapsing in a glowing heap/We’ve gone to far, we’ve
done too much/We have to quit it/Just one more kiss, just
one more touch/Please ten more minutes/This feels so good
just barely moving." Just in case you weren’t astute
enough to pick-up on the fact our protagonist is in the midst
of an adulterous tyrst in some cheap hotel, Bazan kindly spells
it out for you by preceding the lines above with: “This
is how we multiply/Pity that it’s not my wife,” even setting
the stage for his indiscretion with the line, “Gideon is
in the drawer/Clothes scattered on the floor.”
In one of the few missteps of the album and what I can only
assume is a moment of solecism, the next three tracks, “Penetration”
“Indian Summer” and “Progress” digress and finds the husband
disillusioned, presumably a victim of corporate downsizing,
musing on associated fallout. Although, musically the tracks
are the album’s strongest, they seem out of context in the
overall schema of the album and might even have fit better
within the confines of Winners Never Quit. While the
Joshua Tree-esque guitar lines during the bridge of
“Penetration” make the track worth a listen, as usual it’s
Bazan’s clever wordplay that makes the track standout: “Have
you ever seen an idealist with gray hairs on his head?/Or
successful men that keep in touch with unsuccessful friends?/You
only think you did, I could have sworn I saw it too but as
it turns out, it was just a clever ad for cigarettes.”
On “Indian Summer” and “Progress” Bazan curiously brings the
kids into the equation for reasons unclear; I can only surmise
that he’s attempting to explain the protagonists’ earlier
wanderlust.
With the next three songs, “Magazine,” “Rehearsal” and “Second
Best,” Bazan gives us the fly-on-the-wall treatment as the
husband deals with his regret and imminent confrontation with
his scorned wife. On “Magazine,” like any typical philanderer,
the husband feebly tries to lessen the impact of his indiscretion
by pointing out that his wickedness pales in the face of his
wife’s righteousness: “Look, you earned your wings/ Are
you an angel now or a vulture constantly hovering over, waiting
for a big mistake.” ... “How does that work out for
you in your holy quest to be above reproach.” Her response
is documented on “Rehearsal,” when she says, “It’s priceless
when you say have to work late, when we both know you’re at
a motel/Here’s the thing that’s so much more depressing than
the infidelity itself/ Darling, you are so unoriginal/Each
move more obvious than the one before it.” In “Second
Best,” the wife tries to come to terms with playing second
fiddle and makes a last ditch effort to salvage the marriage
with a failed attempt at intimacy, which she describes as,
“Wet familiar exchanges like needle pulling thread/the
empty movments that once were so inspired, desperate attempts
to fan the flame, without the fire/The mattress creaks beneath
the symphony of misery and cum.”
Hell hath no furry like a woman scorned, as our protagonist
friend inevitably discovers. The second to last song, “Priests
and Paramedics,” finds the wife on the killing end of a failed
marriage, with a fallback plan of her own. As the man is being
wheeled away to the ambulance—presumably after being stabbed
by the wife—he asks if he’s going to die; the “trained” paramedics
tell him he’ll be alright. By the end of the song, the priest
delivers a somewhat disturbing graveside eulogy in which he
intones:“We’re all gonna die, could be twenty years, could
be tonight/Lately I have been wondering why we go to so much
trouble to postpone the unavoidable and prolong the pain of
being alive.”
Known for his penchant for intimate storytelling, Bazan has
once again delivered a heavy-handed storyline, in a similar
vein—albeit more sophisticated and tenebrous—to his previous
effort, Winners Never Quit. While Bazan hasn’t exactly
tilled any new ground musically, Control has its moments
of brilliance. One thing is evident, he’s spent a great deal
of time and painstaking effort honing his skills as a storyteller.
Control, unlike its predecessor, which ended with
a little "oh well, look on the brightside" optimism:
"Count it a blessing that your're such a failure
your second chance might never have come," ends without
a moral compass to leave the listener with a feeling of betterment.
On the staid and melancholic ballad, “Rejoice,” you're left
with the following pessimistic coda: “Wouldn’t it be wonderful
if everything were meaningless?/But everything is so meaningful
and most everything turns to shit.”
On a scale of overly ambitious yet memorable rock concept
albums, if one is Master Of Puppets and ten is O.K.
Computer, Control rates a nine: The Texas Jersusalem
Crossroads.
— Dave Herrera
Track List:
- Options
- Rapture
- Penetration
- Indian Summer
- Progress
- Magazine
- Rehearsal
- Second Best
- Priests and Paramedics
- Rejoice
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