Geoff Soule - A Wild Man Brandishing an Uprooted Tree
(Super Mega Corporation)
A Wild Man Brandishing an Uprooted Tree, the new solo project by Geoff Soule of Fuck, arrived in my mailbox with a special bonus gift of 2 packs of Smarties, coming in the height of the anthrax scare. This, of course, created quite a dilemna. Do I eat the Smarties? What if they have anthrax on them? In full patriotic fervor, I did eat those Smarties, and, here, one month later, I am still alive. Turns out the risk was pretty minimal.
You could probably say the same thing about the music on Soule's new EP. If you are a fan of the F-word band, then the risk in sending Geoff six bucks for these 10 songs is pretty minimal. The quality of the songs is definitely more uneven than F and the F-words, however, the EP is overall almost as good as another F#@& release and is quite similar in style.
The same sort of silly imagery common in F*ck releases is also used here: there are monkeys, ghosts, early-modern philosophers, etc. The "Monkey" is inspired by a children's drawing, a copy of which is included as insert, using the caption of the picture as the main lyrics, "The little monkey is frying like the birds, he is trying to catch some fish." The song sounds like Pavement if Pavement was a country bar band, the guitar creating a whimsical melody, sounding like a giddy man stumbling around half drunk. "Ghost" has a more Western feel, the cymbals creating a shimmering echo behind Soule's voice and guitar. "Kant" sounds a bit more like classic rock, the slant to the vocals and the side-stepping guitar sounding well suiting to technicolor performance footage.
Like Fuck, the music is quite varied, ranging from slowed down rock to noisy punk. "Ghost" and "Kant" may follow a slow pace, but both are followed by much more aggressive songs. "Punk" is, ummm, how can I describe this? "Punk" is a punk song. Messy, jumpy, and noisy, it sputters around two minutes, throwing in a sax moan towards the end for good measure. "Ur" is less straightforwardly noisy, centering on a nimble bassline to anchor Soule's vocals, backed with harpsichord, but the song rips open in a couple sections with a noisy, jagged guitar part.
If you like to Fuck and have six bucks in your pocket, then this EP comes recommended. Whether or not you eat the candy that comes with it is a much more important question to ask yourself.
|
