| In the Shadow of the Living Room should come with a sticker that reads "Caution: Do not listen to this CD while operating heavy machinery or driving. May cause disorientation and confusion." To a certain number of people, all I'd have to do to describe Reaching Quiet would be to say "includes members of cLOUDDEAD," and they'd immediately get a good idea of the weirdness that was in store for them. However, even that might not be enough - perhaps it would be a good idea to append that fact with this brief note from In the Shadow of the Living Room liner notes: "All stuff done in our bedrooms in our parents' houses in Cincinnati, OH, from March 2000 - March 2001 after we dropped out of art school and went digital. "My Prayer Rug" recorded in a moldy warehouse with a drunk guy in early 1998." The boys don't specify what sort of chemical influences they were under when this stuff was recorded, but we can safely assume from the material herein that they were under the influence of something (other than Ween, of course). What we have here is thirty (count 'em, thirty) "songs," which range in scope from totally random, often quite funny samples lasting less than thirty seconds, to manipulated answering machine messages to a few pieces that approach actual songs. The whole thing is stitched together like a bizarre, hallucinogenic sound-quilt, with why? rapping (for lack of a better term) about the most bizarre things you can think of. why? has a strange, sing-songy way of reciting his words, which is pretty much unique, and sometimes borders on sounding totally retarded (a tendency which also plagued the early recordings of those maestros of weird, Ween). The vocals are usually buried among all the other strange and frightening sounds that these guys cook up - sometimes sped up, sometimes slowed down, sometimes otherwise garbled, and almost always entirely unintelligible. However, they were thoughtful enough to provide a lyric sheet, so gems like "The first time I heard of you / You were playing Hamlet on Star Search / And placing prank calls / To relatively obscure celebrities" ("Slow Polaroid") and "I shared a bus seat with Prince Charles / Casual...loafers, blue blazer / You can stare at your reflection / In his stylish sunglasses" ("Salad Days") won't go entirely unappreciated. Lyrically, most of these songs find why? riffing on the little things in life that he finds peculiar, such as the inhumanity of keeping pet fish ("You put them into a sticky position / You boxed up three cubic feet of cold ocean / And not an honest sample either") and the potential joys of retirement ("After I've given it all up / I imagine myself at the lake set from What About Bob? /... Contemplating the diversity of bird chirps"). For the most part, these observations, when you can make them out, are interesting, funny and charming. If you have the patience to hang with these boys (or if you're a big fan of what they've done in cLOUDDEAD), you just might want to check out what they were doing in their bedrooms at their parents' houses in the year 2000. - Splendid |
2XLP/Out Of Print