A Perfect Circle creates the Mulholland Dr. of Music with Thirteenth Step
Written: Oct 25 '03
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Some original stuff, some hard stuff, some interesting lyrics.
Cons: Maybe a bit on the self-indulgent, (ohh I hate this word) pretentious side.
The Bottom Line: Thirteenth Step is like, art and stuff. But it's pretty cool.
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| flamepillar's Full Review: Thirteenth Step by A Perfect Circle |
It is in that time of reviewing true rock music that my fellow reviewers totally kick my ass. If you don't believe me, go ahead and suffer through this blathering tub of mediocrity and then check out some of the other reviews.
A Perfect Circle are led by none other than Maynard James Keenan. No need to check your glasses, folks, indeed it's the same man that stood at the mike for Tool. But it gets even weirder than that. Also assisting the band here and there are familiar faces from Nine Inch Nails, Marilyn Manson and The Swans. Now the reason I actually even picked this CD up, aside from hearing about it so often here on Epinions, is that I saw the name James Iha on the sticker. As it turns out, Mr. Iha didn't actually join the band until after they had finished this album and he now plays with them live. It'll be interesting to see what kind of an influence (if any) he has on the band... assuming that they stay together long enough to make another record!
The opening minutes of APC's latest effort, entitled Thirteenth Step, couldn't possibly be weirder. We are introduced with some abstract guitar plucking, almost the kind you would hear during a sound test. (Hey, maybe that's the idea.) In the background, the rim tapping keeps a steady rhythm flowing, and before long the bass kicks in. Occasionally, Keenan drops in with a creepy falsetto -- "Lieeee to get what I came for... Lieeee to get what I'm after..." By the time this has gone on for three minutes, you start to think "This must be foreplay."
And sure as heckfire, just over the four-minute marker, out blast two chords at full throttle, only to backfire with two smooth, melodic notes. On one hand, these two notes seem to say "There, I did it," and on the other hand seem to say "Holy sheeeit!" From this moment on, the song plods along so slowly that your hair would have to be six feet long to effectively "bang" it to the music, if anyone still does that anymore.
Once that epic weirdness is over, things settle down slightly. The melody of "Weak and Powerless" is easy enough to follow, but you'll probably find yourself trying to pick a rhythm out of the guitars, 'cause the drums won't tell you much except that it's a fast 3/4 song, and now it's settling into 4/4, no wait it's 7/8, okay never mind it just went back into the 3/4, skipping a beat here and there. And you thought Dave Matthews had complicated beats...! And you wanna talk about weird lyrics, check this out -- "Someone feed the monkey while I dig in search of China, white as Dracula I approach the bottom."
"The Noose" doesn't seem to go anywhere until the last minute or so when it finally puts that halo to good use (you'll see). "Blue" is as easy-listening as it gets out of the first four songs. Although it doesn't get any faster, it has this constant feeling like it's going downhill, like it's gathering some kind of momentum which is finally realized (barely) in the chorus. Maybe it's my imagination, but the chorus seems to start out a lot like "Crawling" by Linkin Park. (I know, I know) This is the kind of song where it almost seems like the mood is setting the music, not the other way around.
On "Vanishing" we slow down again with another atmospheric tune. But you can't have an atmosphere without turbulence, right? Case closed. Obviously they are not scared of pronouncing words in weird ways like "Disa... ppear!" I'm still not all that crazy about this one, but I guess it happens.
One thing I couldn't help but notice that I should mention at this point -- on the back of the CD, the song titles are listed on the right side, and on the left side, the numbers 1-12 tattooed on someone's arm. Then there are these light "strings" that connect the numbers to their respective song titles, and many of the strings deliberately overlap each other before reaching the song titles. But the thing is, the first five strings are overlapping each other like crazy, then all of a sudden the sixth string is just gliding smoothly across, only overlapped by one other string. And as it turns out, the sixth song, along with the song that corresponds to the one string that overlaps it, are two of the most subtle numbers in the bunch. I don't know, I just find that kind of stuff weird.
So anyways, this sixth song, "A Whisper" is driven mostly by strings, and some odd synthesized effects that sound like something Styx might have done in the Pieces of Eight days. It is a strangely modern and beautiful song in its own right, and has other moments that border on the haunting side of Silverchair.
The seventh track is where all these strange feelings culminate in an upbeat burst of anger called "The Outsider". I don't mean this as an insult but it sounds a lot like a heavier version of Three Doors Down. It's right around here that the album REALLY starts to get weird with "Crimes" which is almost nothing more than distant drums echoing off the walls, and a few eccentric guitar riffs coming and going. The track fades almost as if you were drunk and you were in the process of passing out. For the last minute of this two and a half minute piece you still hear this distant "tinkering" with the musical equipment off in the distant realm of reality.
Then you wake up to this wobbly, stringy ballad that is completely unlike anything else on the album. It is actually a cover of the song "The Nurse Who Loved Me" originally done by Failure. It wavers off-key in that drunken artsy way and you'd half expect to see 3-D images pop out of your speakers if you looked at them long enough. I don't know if I'm sensing something truly heartfelt or merely a parody of it. Either way, it's eerie and beautiful.
It's a sharp turn back to lucidity with "Pet". This song rocks so hard it is literally frightening. For one minute, it is nearly silent. And the next, there is an earthquake of guitar chords, eclipsed by this one way up high, alternating between two close notes. Much has been made of the lyrics here -- "Lay your head down child, I won't let the boogeyman come, Count the bodies like sheep, To the rhythm of the war drums!" I think it might just be sarcastic commentary on the "sensationalizing" of war. They're always making it sound like it's because of the military action (war drums) that we can sleep safely at night. But there isn't that much of a connection between the two at all. Bring the soldiers home and we'd still sleep just fine. Elsewhere in the song, the line "Stay with me, safe and ignorant" appears, so that is either a devastating blow to my theory or they're pretending to be the President. I don't know.
"Lullaby", while a separate track, is merely an echo of the previous song, whistling those same scary guitar notes and whispering "Go back to sleep" again and again.
Then at the end, there is "Gravity". How's this for a comparison -- Duran Duran's "Save A Prayer". Remember the whistling sound effect in that song? Well imagine someone singing like that and you have "Gravity", which to me is probably the best song on here. The rock elements stay subtle, and Maynard pleads for another chance -- "Catch me, heal me, lift me back up to the sun, I choose to live, I choose to live." With a last line like that, you almost have to think it was all worth it.
Basically Thirteenth Step is a shot at the artsy, conceptual side of music. The fact that music could make you feel something was what originally got people started doing it... because it is a form of magic. Trying to turn it into a gigantic math problem isn't going to prove anything; ultimately it won't explain the way that music creates feelings (and indeed, this one does in spots). Sometimes you just have to let it go and as Tyler Durden says, "Stop trying to control everything and just -- let -- go!" Nevertheless, I found this to be a fascinating listen, albeit a quickie.
To put it another way, Thirteenth Step is to music, what Mulholland Dr. is to the movies.
Recommended:
Yes
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flamepillar
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