|
(Dec 9, 2004)
Camper Van Beethoven: New Roman Times
Rating - ***
The Camper Van Beethoven page
|
A new release from Camper Van Beethoven is a pleasant surprise in
the otherwise largely barren alternative musical landscape of 2004. David Lowery,
the vocalist and braintrust of CVB, has intimated that he reunited the
band after 15 years because of the return of the ultra-conservative political
climate, not seen since the height of the Reagan years. It might also be mentioned
in passing that Lowery had recently received notice that the semi-successful
Virgin Records-Cracker gravy train had reached the end of the line, at Virgin's behest.
|
|
|
|
No matter - good music never needs an excuse for its existence. And CVB never
had a shortage of good (sometimes great) music. So the obvious question was: Did
they have anything new to offer, or would their new release be just a warming
over of stuff from their glory days?
The answer is an ironic one: The material is new and different. But different
isn't always better. The music itself is as original as ever, unfettered by
conventional constraints. The exploration of the trademark CVB sound,
a mixture of violin, mandolin, and synthesizer, having first found its voice
in songs like "Cattle Reversed," "Border Ska," and "Mao Reminisces About
His Days in Southern China" now enjoys a rebirth in such songs as "Sons of the
New Golden West" (I&II), "White Fluffy Clouds," "R&R in Uzbekistan," and "The Long
Plastic Hallway."
|
"Sons of the New Golden West" and its reprise are the only songs on the CD for
which Chris "Rat Television" Molla is given songwriting credit, but his stamp is
unmistakable. He sounds so good here that it makes you wonder if they found
something in the can from 1989 and just now got around to publishing it (an old Moody
Blues trick.) It's a bit of a disappointment that we don't hear from Chris any
more than that. But it's better than not hearing from him at all.
"White Fluffy Clouds," a soldier's ode to his bomber plane, starts out as your
typical ironic atonal vocal job by Lowery and then takes off, like its subject,
into the ozone with a three minute musical postlude that has little or no relation
to the body of the song itself. When CVB jams there's nothing
like it - you would have to go back to Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention to
find anything comparable. With the exception of a few rather unimaginative
numbers later in the CD, the music here is all wonderful.
Now we come to the lyrics. The album notes reveal that the entire 20-song opus
is a sort of latter-day rock opera dedicated to making a mockery of the U.S.'s
war in Iraq and taking other various and sundry swipes at the present
administration. CVB's lyrics were always laden with political
commentary, but what made them stand out is that they used to do it in such
a way that you weren't sure at what depth the commentary stopped and the
self-mockery began. They were a two-headed Janus, poking fun at both the
extreme left and the extreme right, and points in between. Unusual indeed for
an industry where most lyricists have trouble adequately expressing one point
of view let alone two or more. Take for example "When I Win the Lottery" - I
still can't figure out after all these years who they loathed more - the imaginary
singer of this song, or the rich folks he fantasizes about buying the house next door to.
More to the point, their song "Tania" (about Patty Hearst) from the
album Our Beloved Revolutionary Sweetheart concludes with:
My beloved Tania,
We carry your gun deep within our hearts
For no better reason than our lives have no meaning
And we want to be on television
Now fast forward more than 15 years and they are writing songs with lyrics like:
When they come into your house
Are you gonna hide like a, like a little mouse
Will you know what to do?
Will you know what to do?
No effort has been made to take either of these lyrics out of context. The
only logical conclusion is that CVB's lives now have no meaning, and they
want to be on television. I guess when you get to the age where you start to get unsolicited mail from the AARP a certain amount of panic is inevitable, but CVB should go back and see where they lost the ability to laugh at themselves- it was what made their lyrics stand out.
Overall, though, this CD is a must-listen, especially if you are not
old enough to recall CVB's first go-round.
|
