"Dull Alliterative Schemes & Triangle-Shaped Flutter", the new single from Thick Chewy Crust, has already established itself as a strong seller for the band and their record label Bee's Knees Industries, already charting in the top 40 around the world after being released just weeks ago. The reaction from both fans and critics however has been divided, ranging from perplexed to outraged to feelin' it. American President Barack Obama praised the band for veering from their typical anti-establishment political commentary while the normally subdued publishers of High Times Magazine criticized the band for taking "an ill-advised detour from their otherwise sterling recording career."
The three tracks on the single are somewhat atypical for the band in that they feature a combination of harsh spoken-word vocals and dark ambient/post-industrial noise. The only previous recorded output in the band's catalog that covers similar musical territory is their cover of The Cure's "Burn", which also courted controversy for the band albeit to a lesser extent. TCC frontman Bobby Cairo has issued a statement on the band's website (
http://www.audioterrorists.org) explaining his band's new single and addressing their fans:
"I guess it's just about time for me to speak up and spit some shit about what's been going in the world of The Crust. We recently released a single (which would more accurately be described as an EP considering its near 30-minute running length) called "Dull Alliterative Schemes & Triangle-Shaped Flutter". Some people, including President Obama, have responded favorably to this release. Others have criticized it, calling it (among other things) a "distraction" or a "misstep". Personally I don't know exactly how I feel about it, but please allow me to explain just what the hell happened.
"It all started a few weeks ago when my lovely wife Suenaga and I were enjoying a nice home-cooked meal during our tour stop in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada. I took the liberty (since I am a libertarian) of preparing us a dinner of meatloaf, mashed potato and green bean at the kitchenette in our hotel suite, with strawberry rhubarb pie for dessert. This sounds delicious, does it not? And it was for a few minutes... until calamity befell me. You see every meatloaf needs a hearty coating of Heinz ketchup before it can be consumed by human or canine alike. Once I had served the dinner plates for Sue and myself I popped open the Heinz and attempted to pour it onto my share of the 'loaf. Unfortunately there was a watery buildup in the Heinz bottle and this weird ketchup water splashed onto my meatloaf AND the surrounding potato and green. The result looked like something out of that movie The Fly. I was horrified.
"Sue attempted to calm me, assuring me that dinner could be salvaged but I became hysterical. I flung my plate into the trash and turned to drinking to forget my trauma. Fortunately I had been stowing a bottle of E&J from the States for just such an occasion. I drank half a bottle before I blinked an eye while Sue ate her dinner alone... which I felt bad about, but it could not be avoided. After dessert Sue joined me to polish off the remainder of the E&J and an additional bottle of Bombay Sapphire. We became totally fucked up on alcohol, but rather than fucking (like we would normally do in this situation) we decided to toke up on some high-grade Canadian weed that we had purchased from a guard at the border. (Little did we know that the weed had been laced with PCP.) We also decided that it would be a good idea to down a couple dozen pills apiece that we had found in one of Suenaga's bags, not knowing whether they were uppers or downers until it was too late.
"At this point we picked up our instruments and began fooling around with simple, childlike rhymes as Syd Barrett (the founder and only talented member of Pink Floyd) used to do. We started off with "Butter, nutter, scutter, shutter, flutter" and so on. We took turns spitting our shit. As the night progressed our drug and alcohol induced wordplay turned into mutual hallucinations, a sort of folie à deux. We saw objects flying around our room, "miniature UFO's" as Sue described them. At this point our lyrical nuances became more cognitive and ominous: "Sunday's silly services and stealthily scheming sermons." This was a sort of indictment of the Religious Right, or so we deemed at the time. To follow suit we began producing dark, unholy musical instrumentation for the clinically insane, right there on the spot.
"What can I say? Shit happens fast in the digital era. In one inebriated night in our hotel room Sue and I wrote, recorded and mastered our new single and scheduled it for release. Of course that wasn't the only thing that happened that night. After we finished with the music Sue and I encountered a group of satanic hell demons, I'm talking about zombie motherfuckers with three heads. They walked right in through our door without so much as a struggle from hotel security. I managed to fight them off with my Glock, firing at anything with a pulse that wasn't my wife. Some would call me a crazed gunman but more accurately I was a doting husband hellbent on protecting the love of his life. When it was over I passed out with Sue in my arms. We woke up the next morning with no memory of the previous night's events until listening to worried voicemails from record label executives (not to mention hotel staff). By then it was too late to cancel the release of our new single (or undo the damage to the room). Not that we wanted to cancel the single, but it's always nice to have a chance to sleep off your hangover and think things through in a sober light.
"Obviously the public reaction to the single has been mixed. What can I say about this other than to point out that even Babe Ruth didn't hit a home run everytime that he stepped up to the plate? I do however want to discuss one critic in particular: Suenaga has expressed her disdain for this recording and in fact she wishes to disown it completely. I am not willing to go that far but I did offer my apologies to Sue for this unfortunate controversy that has arisen. I have also promised my wife that we will cover La Roux's "Bulletproof" on our next album. She loves that song and I'm OK with it. To all of the Crustaceans out there: Thank you for your continued support, especially during this time of duress. I promise that we will knock the ball out of the park during our next plate appearance.
"As an aside I just want to let everyone know (before they read it in the tabloids) that the hotel in Halifax is suing me for the damages to the room, and I am countersuing them for providing inadequate security provisions for my wife and I."
Single Details
"Dull Alliterative Schemes & Triangle-Shaped Flutter" track listing:
1. "Dull Alliterative Schemes (Part 1)"
2. "Dull Alliterative Schemes (Part 2)"
3. "Triangle-Shaped Flutter"
Sounds like:
+ Edited by user 01 February 2011 19:58:33(UTC)
| Reason: Not specified
