THE DUKE LISTENS TO
MUSIC TO START A CULT TO
BY GRAM RABBIT
MUSIC TO START A CULT TO
BY GRAM RABBIT
Joshua Tree, California has inspired or spawned a bewildering
array of evocative works in its time. What’s so special about this
patch of desert that it causes folks to create stuff like The
Joshua Tree by Sexy Bono Plus Three, or The Joshua Tree, about
Dolph Lundgren shoots some motherfuckers on account of the
“criminal activity”?
This haunting stretch of wilderness, connected via geographical
technicality to the suburban sprawl of California, and yet in
itself acting as some eerie, timeless, reserve.
At least, that’s if the tourist brochures and the album covers and
so on are to believed. You don’t need The Duke to tell you how
much of a lying sonna bitch that Dolph Lundgren can be.
The answer, though, may rest somewhere within the 41 minutes of
Music To Start A Cult To, the debut release by Joshua Tree
residents Gram Rabbit. These vaguely disco-esque yet subversively
disturbing tunes what discuss the Jesus, Satan, Cowboys and Aliens
serve to bridge the timeless with the contemporary, the absolute
with the transient.
Or some such horse-shit.
Most of the time, the melding of synth-pop melodies and American
Gothic subject matter works a treat. Album opener Dirty Horse
imagines a meeting between Christ and Lucifer, binding Morricone
Spaghetti Western cues and Electronica in a highly appealing
manner. Dual vocalists Jesika Von Rabbit and Todd Rutherford
harmonise in an initially-disconcerting conversational manner that
appears more subtly impressive with every listen. It’s enough to
make a fella say about “Shit, this is kinda cool, is what.”
Cowboy-Up is something of a let-down after such an evocative
opening. The chorus is a stomp-along affair what rekindles long-
though-exorcised memories of The B-52’s, but as a whole the track
seems horribly dated, embarrassing even. Trying not to cringe
throughout the verses is a particularly dangerous experiment what
could, feasibly, result in the listener becoming as pretentious as
the listening material.
It’s a fairly unrepresentative lapse, though, an isolated example
of the ambitions being thwarted by production values what can’t
support them.
Even this, though, isn’t really a viable excuse anymore, when
folks like Dizzee Rascal are producing stuff in their bedrooms
what blows the hell out of anything produced in any “professional”
studio.
Things get back on track, though, with the wonderfully oblique
Kill A Man, awash with eerie as all hell Doo-Doo-Doo-Doo vocal
harmonies and a disarmingly simple arrangement that by the songs
end, without anyone knowing a damn thing about it, has
incorporated military drum-motifs and transient synth-flourishes,
complete with the haunting refrain; “I see, I kill.”
It’s enough to make a man worry about the kind of “cult” these
sons a bitches are hoping to instigate.
Disco #2 sounds like a long-lost cousin to Halleluiah, the Happy
Mondays masterpiece, with the four-note piano intro going on to
underpin Von Rabbit’s glam-pouting. It could get a fella all
nostalgic, is what, like those Scissor Sisters do so well,
although the lyrical concerns for the Rabbit folks are a tad
further to the left of the field.
Music To Start A Cult To is the kinda record what gets you all
disinterested and so on and then embarrasses you no end when you
put it on for a friend, after yacking about how unimpressive it
is, and find that it has actually morphed into something of a
delight.
What first appears to be a fairly repetitive affair soon reveals
itself as being host to any number of musical dalliances and
experiments. Witness, for example, whilst hardly terribly removed
from the rest of the material as far as the “melody” is concerned,
opens with a bout of reggae-tomfoolery that seems to get lost in
the mix after a couple seconds, but upon closer inspection,
reveals itself to have been there all along. The track also
features one of a number of faintly-unsettling snatches of
dialogue what crop up now and again, in this case a young girl
saying “Rabbit” over and over.
Influences are fairly easy to spot, be it the hints of Vogue by
Madonna that pepper I & suseJ, or how Land Of Jail toys with a
scuzzy MC5-evoking sound, or perhaps Lost In Place, what floats
along with late-night trip-hop ease, sounding like a more
Americana-influenced Massive Attack.
Lost In Place is, in fact, one of the highlights of the record, a
record I initially perceived as being fairly dry with regards
“stand-out” content, but what came to convince The Duke that yes,
there was more going on that you thought, you narrow-minded non-
psychedelic son of a bitch.
By far the “Best Track What The Album Has For To Offer”, though,
is folk-inflected Devil’s Playground, a number what incorporates
bizarre chanting background vocals for to compliment a rather
beautiful slice of the life-is-hard storytelling. It has the best
“tune” on the damn record, for folks what think things like
“tunes” are still important in this age of cosmic, acid-frazzled
lunacy.
The band-name manages to similarly conjure images of Gram Parsons
and Who Framed Roger Rabbit?, the latter accentuated by the female
vocalist’s moniker. This mix of the familiar and the infuriatingly
mysterious serves also to influence the actual content, don’t you
know?
The “Bio” section of the group’s website presents the teasing
statement; “Gram Rabbit would like to tell you all about
themselves, but they would like even more not to.” This enveloping
of one’s identity may be nothing new, harking back to the
anonymous folks behind a thousand early-20th Century recordings
made by a plethora of pseudonyms, but in an age of reality
Television, a time when folks are wanting nothing more than to
tell you every detail about themselves, up to and including the
mass, density and vegetable content of their last shit, it is also
pleasantly refreshing.
The biggest surprise of all, though, arrives in the form of the
final track, New Energy, which at once sounds completely removed
from all that has gone before and yet also, confusingly, makes
perfect sense in the context of the album. It sounds for all the
world like The Verve at their more unwieldy, and, despite the fact
that it is among the least immediately “catchy” tracks on the
record, provides possibly the only sure-fire “crossover” number on
the record.
They’d have to take out the gratuitous “Now I feel the fucking
energy”, though, if they want to get on the radio and so on. I
mean, come the fuck on, The Gram Rabbits, that kinda gratuitous
swearing ain’t nothing but a bullshit motherfucking ploy for to
attract attention, you foul-mouthed motherfuckers.
Increase the peace, and also the vocabulary, motherfuckers.
Thanks folks.
Music To Start A Cult To is released by Stinky Records on 17th
August 2004.
Drop The Duke A Line
array of evocative works in its time. What’s so special about this
patch of desert that it causes folks to create stuff like The
Joshua Tree by Sexy Bono Plus Three, or The Joshua Tree, about
Dolph Lundgren shoots some motherfuckers on account of the
“criminal activity”?
This haunting stretch of wilderness, connected via geographical
technicality to the suburban sprawl of California, and yet in
itself acting as some eerie, timeless, reserve.
At least, that’s if the tourist brochures and the album covers and
so on are to believed. You don’t need The Duke to tell you how
much of a lying sonna bitch that Dolph Lundgren can be.
The answer, though, may rest somewhere within the 41 minutes of
Music To Start A Cult To, the debut release by Joshua Tree
residents Gram Rabbit. These vaguely disco-esque yet subversively
disturbing tunes what discuss the Jesus, Satan, Cowboys and Aliens
serve to bridge the timeless with the contemporary, the absolute
with the transient.
Or some such horse-shit.
Most of the time, the melding of synth-pop melodies and American
Gothic subject matter works a treat. Album opener Dirty Horse
imagines a meeting between Christ and Lucifer, binding Morricone
Spaghetti Western cues and Electronica in a highly appealing
manner. Dual vocalists Jesika Von Rabbit and Todd Rutherford
harmonise in an initially-disconcerting conversational manner that
appears more subtly impressive with every listen. It’s enough to
make a fella say about “Shit, this is kinda cool, is what.”
Cowboy-Up is something of a let-down after such an evocative
opening. The chorus is a stomp-along affair what rekindles long-
though-exorcised memories of The B-52’s, but as a whole the track
seems horribly dated, embarrassing even. Trying not to cringe
throughout the verses is a particularly dangerous experiment what
could, feasibly, result in the listener becoming as pretentious as
the listening material.
It’s a fairly unrepresentative lapse, though, an isolated example
of the ambitions being thwarted by production values what can’t
support them.
Even this, though, isn’t really a viable excuse anymore, when
folks like Dizzee Rascal are producing stuff in their bedrooms
what blows the hell out of anything produced in any “professional”
studio.
Things get back on track, though, with the wonderfully oblique
Kill A Man, awash with eerie as all hell Doo-Doo-Doo-Doo vocal
harmonies and a disarmingly simple arrangement that by the songs
end, without anyone knowing a damn thing about it, has
incorporated military drum-motifs and transient synth-flourishes,
complete with the haunting refrain; “I see, I kill.”
It’s enough to make a man worry about the kind of “cult” these
sons a bitches are hoping to instigate.
Disco #2 sounds like a long-lost cousin to Halleluiah, the Happy
Mondays masterpiece, with the four-note piano intro going on to
underpin Von Rabbit’s glam-pouting. It could get a fella all
nostalgic, is what, like those Scissor Sisters do so well,
although the lyrical concerns for the Rabbit folks are a tad
further to the left of the field.
Music To Start A Cult To is the kinda record what gets you all
disinterested and so on and then embarrasses you no end when you
put it on for a friend, after yacking about how unimpressive it
is, and find that it has actually morphed into something of a
delight.
What first appears to be a fairly repetitive affair soon reveals
itself as being host to any number of musical dalliances and
experiments. Witness, for example, whilst hardly terribly removed
from the rest of the material as far as the “melody” is concerned,
opens with a bout of reggae-tomfoolery that seems to get lost in
the mix after a couple seconds, but upon closer inspection,
reveals itself to have been there all along. The track also
features one of a number of faintly-unsettling snatches of
dialogue what crop up now and again, in this case a young girl
saying “Rabbit” over and over.
Influences are fairly easy to spot, be it the hints of Vogue by
Madonna that pepper I & suseJ, or how Land Of Jail toys with a
scuzzy MC5-evoking sound, or perhaps Lost In Place, what floats
along with late-night trip-hop ease, sounding like a more
Americana-influenced Massive Attack.
Lost In Place is, in fact, one of the highlights of the record, a
record I initially perceived as being fairly dry with regards
“stand-out” content, but what came to convince The Duke that yes,
there was more going on that you thought, you narrow-minded non-
psychedelic son of a bitch.
By far the “Best Track What The Album Has For To Offer”, though,
is folk-inflected Devil’s Playground, a number what incorporates
bizarre chanting background vocals for to compliment a rather
beautiful slice of the life-is-hard storytelling. It has the best
“tune” on the damn record, for folks what think things like
“tunes” are still important in this age of cosmic, acid-frazzled
lunacy.
The band-name manages to similarly conjure images of Gram Parsons
and Who Framed Roger Rabbit?, the latter accentuated by the female
vocalist’s moniker. This mix of the familiar and the infuriatingly
mysterious serves also to influence the actual content, don’t you
know?
The “Bio” section of the group’s website presents the teasing
statement; “Gram Rabbit would like to tell you all about
themselves, but they would like even more not to.” This enveloping
of one’s identity may be nothing new, harking back to the
anonymous folks behind a thousand early-20th Century recordings
made by a plethora of pseudonyms, but in an age of reality
Television, a time when folks are wanting nothing more than to
tell you every detail about themselves, up to and including the
mass, density and vegetable content of their last shit, it is also
pleasantly refreshing.
The biggest surprise of all, though, arrives in the form of the
final track, New Energy, which at once sounds completely removed
from all that has gone before and yet also, confusingly, makes
perfect sense in the context of the album. It sounds for all the
world like The Verve at their more unwieldy, and, despite the fact
that it is among the least immediately “catchy” tracks on the
record, provides possibly the only sure-fire “crossover” number on
the record.
They’d have to take out the gratuitous “Now I feel the fucking
energy”, though, if they want to get on the radio and so on. I
mean, come the fuck on, The Gram Rabbits, that kinda gratuitous
swearing ain’t nothing but a bullshit motherfucking ploy for to
attract attention, you foul-mouthed motherfuckers.
Increase the peace, and also the vocabulary, motherfuckers.
Thanks folks.
Music To Start A Cult To is released by Stinky Records on 17th
August 2004.
Drop The Duke A Line
