Friend/Enemy - 10 Songs
(Perishable)
Why do I have a problem with recommending Tim Kinsella projects? I suppose
it's for the same reason that I would often have a problem recommending
Captain Beefheart. Not that I mean to imply anything about Kinsella being
worthy to do anything more than shave the good painter Van Vliet's leg hair.
But what we have here is difficulty. Trout Mask Replica is a very
difficult record. I think it's amazing. It took me a long time to realize
that, even after I mastered my Residents record collection. I'm pretty sure
I hated it the first few times I heard it. I can't tell if Kinsella is
either very inconsistent, or so difficult that it might take me three times
as long to warm to one project or installment as it would to another.
Kinsella and Beefheart do share similarities in sound and feeling, a feeling
that Beefheart undoubtedly invented, but one that's so fresh that people can
still innovate within it (see: U.S. Maple). Kinsella doesn't innovate, but
he keeps it breathing, and I admire that. What you have here with
Friend/Enemy's 10 Songs is a prototypical Kinsella project, but it's
one of the good ones. It's got plenty of fascinating sounds and jarring
ones, and Kinsella wails all the way through. Tons of people don't like this
shit. Sometimes I don't like it either. This time, it works. It's not as
sparklingly fucked as Joan of Arc's actual masterwork (yes, I used that
word) The Gap, and maybe it doesn't even hit the high points of their
fade-out EP, How Can Any Thing So Little Be Any More. But as usual,
it's super well recorded, it's never boring, and it's got enough pretense to
destroy an Amish village—which, in my case, is a good thing.
And that brings me back to my Kinsella complex. I like things that are
generally classified as "pretentious," and I've mentioned this before in my
brief (so far) career as an indie rock writer. Tell me a record has song
titles like "Do the Sound on One Foot Dance to the Radio Rodeo" and "The
Lost Sciences of the First Pressing of the Bible" and I'll be more than
likely to jump for it. I even like Kinsella's lyrical turns for the most
part. Thankfully, this record's got no clunkers about "stop[ping] all this
blowjobishness;" instead, we've got: "I'm just friendly to strangers/ Every
Sarah every Rachel every Jen/ Every Bobby every Steve every Phil/ And I
swear I'm gonna smash my guitar one of these days." This might be some of
his best poetry, and it's coming from probably the record's best ,"I'd
Rather Be High Than Get Laid Any Day Of The Week" (or "I'd Rather Be High
Than Fucked Any Day," as otherwise printed on the jewel case with a much
less literal meaning).
The supporting players must not be ignored—there are 11. Only 10 really,
if you don't count Todd Mattei (also of Joan of Arc) who is Friend/Enemy's
co-leader in guitar and occasional vocal. Talented hands abound throughout
the whole record; this stuff is as tight as it gets, unless it's as formless
as it gets, which is honestly the majority of this material. Again, this is
good! Listening to a good Tim Kinsella record is like something weird, and
I'll let you complete the simile, because I think I'm just going to get
right to recommending this record. And who knows, maybe in 10 years this guy
will be a Captain Kinsella for a new generation of eccentrics. I say 10
years because by then I might be able to get past some of his really awful
stuff.
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