I’m not quite sure what possessed me to write-up this short EP (other than that it’s pretty fuckin’ good, that is), but I’d at this point consider it some sort of nap-hangover strangeness that seems to fuel a lot of my nightlife doings nowadays. This is all to say there’s something about these five songs that I’ve never been able to put my finger on. It’s something that I can’t call “off” and wouldn’t stretch to label “uncomfortable”, but it’s got a tone and a feeling that reeks of oddball nights and carnivalesque drunks.
It’s a decent cross-section of the Mischief Brew catalogue—that balance of rustic folk rebellion and gypsy vertigo jams that elevate Erik Peterson from the scores of punks that got old and started getting folky to a punk that is way too talented to be labeled solely as such.
The first song, “Devil of a Time” starts with a sample (one that’s arguably responsible for the name of this blog) and the line “Didn’t we have a devil of a time?” set to strange chords and strange rhythm. It’s a question that seems to still remain a question, despite the fact it’s probably meant to be a leading one. What I’m getting at is that the ambiguousness of the song here and its slightly unsettling backdrops are a microcosm of the whole Mischief Brew kick. It’s about the fever dreams of a world in which the pieces aren’t quite fitting together.
The rest follows with excellent guitar licks (and impressive ones at that, if you’re one of the few that only know Peterson from his punk outfit The Orphans). It’s a mixture of acoustic and electric with everything from mandolins to children spliced in for added effect.
Track 3, “The Drunk of Three Nights” is a favorite, and perhaps a song to match tone and content so fittingly as to make it seem like some sort of cinematic narrative—some gritty noir flick flush with hazy drunks and a femme fatale. It’s a romance that builds tension and releases it with a heavy drop of distortion and reassures us that moments like these are only fleeting.
The final two tracks cover Mischief Brew’s more acousti-folk, “I’m a grown up anarchist, just fucking leave me alone” aesthetic. It’s the cheeky bits about planning silent rebellions and passive retaliations that characterize this other half of the catalogue. It’s no longer about firebombing post offices, it’s about living outside the lines and finding a peace in the rustic and the philosophical.
So here I am, barricaded in my den and moist of nap-sweat in a sway and gaze that led me through this EP about four times. I’m realizing now how befitting of my mood this one really is. I think that strangeness is lurking somewhere and it lives in more forms than one. This is all a bit dramatic, sure, but I think these moments in between the waking life and whatever happens when we lose consciousness are sort of telling in a weird way. They beg the question of whether or not we’ve got the whole thing right. Maybe we did have a devil of a time.
-Drew
No comments:
Post a Comment