andrewtroth's Full Review: Blind Man's Zoo by 10,000 Maniacs
I just read the review of this album written by my friend Sara (serc), and while I thought hers was excellent, I feel I have a few things to say about these songs that complement and expand on her comments. I started to write this as a comment on her review, but realized I had enough to fill up a review on my own, so here goes:
Blind Man's Zoo is one of my all-time favorite albums, and one that I never seem to tire of listening to. Aside from the beauty of the music, with its haunting melodies and Natalie Merchant's mesmerizingly passionate singing, this disc features some of the most thought-provoking and emotionally affecting lyrics I've ever heard in a pop song.
How many pop albums do you know of whose songs cover topics like pollution, poverty, racial hatred, slavery, despotism and unwanted pregnancy? What's really amazing is that this disc covers these serious topics--and more--without being morbidly depressing to listen to. In fact, the anger and outrage expressed in some of the lyrics--but only hinted at by Merchant's mellifluous voice--is something I frequently find cathartic and strangely uplifting.
I think I have to join Sara in proclaiming The Big Parade my favorite track on the album. The song tells the story of a young man's journey to Washington DC to visit the Vietnam Memorial, on which his father's name is engraved. His mother has given him his father's letters home from Vietnam to leave at the Wall. The song is beautifully poignant and can sometimes move me to tears.
Trouble Me is the only song on this album that got any airplay to speak of, and is, I think, the least interesting of the lot. Consisting of a plea for emotional openness in a relationship, it's pleasant enough, but not particularly moving. The flip side of Trouble Me, however, comes two tracks later in Headstrong, a blazing tirade, written in the first person, whose speaker is a Type A personality who rants "Open up your eyes, see me for what I am: cast in iron, I won't break and I won't bend" and "What's the use in mapping your views out in orderly form when it does nothing but confuse and anger me more". This railing against honest communication is what intrigues me: Is the speaker really asking to be left alone, knowing she can't help but drive away the person she's speaking to, or is this actually a twisted cry for help and understanding?
Another song filled with anger is You Happy Puppet, which seems to me to be directed at those who abandon their principles for personal gain or in the service of others: Yes-men, for lack of a better term. "How did they teach you to be just a happy puppet dancing on a string? How do you manage to live inside this tiny stage you can't leave?...let another man tug at the thread that holds up your nodding head...A dullard strung on the wire. When the master's gone you hang there with your eyes and your limbs so lifeless".
I like Sara's analysis of The Lion's Share because I had never thought of how it could apply to our own society here in the US. To me it has always seemed to be a cry against third-world dictatorships and oligarchies, but it can certainly speak to the home situation as well.
The two most complex songs come at the end of the album. Hateful Hate is the story of the white man's conquest of Africa, and the forces within us that impel us to explore, conquer and exploit. Its most interesting commentary, I think, is on the slave trade: "Who came building missions? Unswerving men of the cloth who gave their lives in numbers untold so that black sheep entered the fold. Captured like human livestock, destined for slavery. Naked, walked to the shore where great ships moored for the hellbound journies. Bought and sold with a hateful hate. Curiosity filled the breasts of these with a strange ecstacy. Curiosity killed the best of these by robbing their lives of dignity. Still they moved on and on." It's a powerful song that raises questions about the very basics of human nature.
It took a lot of repeated listenings for me to get the sense of Jubilee. Of course, I could have understood it much sooner if I'd realized that the lyrics are printed in the liner notes. It's the story of a "simple minded...crippled man" who, believing it's his religious calling ("To him the world's defiled. In Lot he sees a likeness there; he swears this Sodom will burn down"), sets fire to a dance hall where young couples of mixed races are dancing ("Black hands on white shoulders, white hands on black shoulders, dancing, and you know what's more"). It's a haunting, disturbing song, with its implications about the role religion (or the perversion of religious teachings) can play in acts of hatred and violence, and the portrait it paints of one man's clouded understanding of the world he lives in.
If you boil most pop songs down to their essence, it almost always consists of "I love you", "Why don't you love me?", "I want to have sex" or "I want to dance." Try to boil the songs on Blind Man's Zoo down and you get twisted knots of self-analysis and social commentary. That's why I love this album.
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